DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jan 7, 2020 23:59:59 GMT -5
Here's a photo from December. Why the construction is treated as a secret is anyone's guess, but that's the story of this two decades of effort...anyone's guess.
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Nevada Hoya
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Post by Nevada Hoya on Jan 10, 2020 12:14:39 GMT -5
From Lee Reed:
We are in the midst of a year when we are celebrating the beginnings of intercollegiate athletics at Georgetown 150 years ago. Already it is proving to be a very special year with our men's soccer team winning their first-ever NCAA National Championship. In the spring, we will complete construction of Cooper Field, which will provide a true home field for our football, field hockey, and women's and men's lacrosse teams. And on May 9, we will invite all members of the Georgetown Athletics family to join us at Shirley Povich Field in Rockville, MD for an afternoon of festivities as we commemorate our first intercollegiate team on the Hilltop
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jan 13, 2020 0:13:06 GMT -5
Hey, we got some new lockers too!
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jan 21, 2020 20:24:15 GMT -5
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Post by Problem of Dog on Feb 1, 2020 22:20:27 GMT -5
Hey, we got some new lockers too! I am not exaggerating when I say that the old football locker rooms (which had to be vacated in the spring so that lacrosse could use them) were the single most embarrassing thing about the football program that I can remember. Maybe the worst facilities in the entire school. There was not a single player who had a worse locker room in high school.
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eb59
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Post by eb59 on May 8, 2020 11:25:50 GMT -5
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Post by ColumbiaHeightsHoya on May 14, 2020 12:55:05 GMT -5
Wow! That actually looks pretty good. IF they get rid of the visiting side and add the end zone area for students you may have something here.
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Post by whitebuffalo on May 21, 2020 13:17:16 GMT -5
Wow! That actually looks pretty good. IF they get rid of the visiting side and add the end zone area for students you may have something here. Agreed. As a disillusioned member of the 20-year Hoya Stadium wait list club I'm happy to see this side completed but until there's a visiting side to match this still doesn't qualify as a "football stadium". A stadium for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey...sure, but college football, nope.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 13, 2020 18:52:19 GMT -5
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 13, 2020 20:11:46 GMT -5
Hoping against hope that a small set of seats could be constructed for visitors. Overall, this 15 year process has been fairly disappointing. What was promised, 2003: Or 2005: Or 2007 (with video board):
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 14, 2020 22:08:56 GMT -5
Hoping against hope that a small set of seats could be constructed for visitors. Overall, this 15 year process has been fairly disappointing. Not gonna argue with the "disappoint" piece, but I feel like the contours of the path ahead are pretty well-defined - if, unfortunately, not written down clearly anywhere in the public domain, nor aligned to any sort of real timeline, even before Covid-19 unsettled everything. We can't construct permanent visitor bleachers anytime soon because we need the ability to extend the field out to preferred soccer width. That will be necessary during the lengthy 'Castle Yates-side' maneuver during which, over the span of like a decade, they rebuilt Yates on top of the current Shaw Field, and the soccer teams have to to play on MSF/Cooper Field. Also, the campus plan calls for extensive construction around Harbin and otherwise generally on that east side of the field.Maximum flexibility for staging and the like is important. Of course, between Covid-19 and everything else, who the hell knows anymore.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 14, 2020 22:55:01 GMT -5
Not gonna argue with the "disappoint" piece, but I feel like the contours of the path ahead are pretty well-defined - if, unfortunately, not written down clearly anywhere in the public domain, nor aligned to any sort of real timeline, even before Covid-19 unsettled everything. We can't construct permanent visitor bleachers anytime soon because we need the ability to extend the field out to preferred soccer width. That will be necessary during the lengthy 'Castle Yates-side' maneuver during which, over the span of like a decade, they rebuilt Yates on top of the current Shaw Field, and the soccer teams have to to play on MSF/Cooper Field. Also, the campus plan calls for extensive construction around Harbin and otherwise generally on that east side of the field.Maximum flexibility for staging and the like is important. Of course, between Covid-19 and everything else, who the hell knows anymore. Temporary, portable seating would be sufficient and appropriate. The castling of Yates could well be over a decade away. To depreciate the cost of the Kehoe Field upgrade (reported in 2018 as being between $5-10 million) will likely require a useful life for at least 5-10 years before it is torn down to accommodate the Shaw Field construction. Harbin II construction will also be delayed for years by the economic downturn and the likely delay in the capital campaign. Portable seating might not prohibit construction in and around the site. The grass berm envisioned for that space isn't happening for the reasons as described above and will lie fallow while someone tries to figure out what to do it and when it can be paid for. Of course, the idea proposed of seating in the north end zone does not appear to have made any headway. This presumes attendance demands it, of course. Brighter minds than any of us should be looking seriously at a hybrid learning model over this decade which would reduce the on-campus population enough to support the deferred maintenance needed on every dorm on the campus, but to do so would likely mean 9-18 months of downtime per property. The kind of top to bottom work needed to carry New South (built in 1957) Harbin (1964), Darnall (1964), Henle (1976), Village A (1979) and Village C (1986) into the mid 21st Century require either new dorms to cover moving older dorms offline, or a reduction of on-campus student populations to relieve the capacity.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 19, 2020 12:12:34 GMT -5
Not gonna argue with the "disappoint" piece, but I feel like the contours of the path ahead are pretty well-defined - if, unfortunately, not written down clearly anywhere in the public domain, nor aligned to any sort of real timeline, even before Covid-19 unsettled everything. We can't construct permanent visitor bleachers anytime soon because we need the ability to extend the field out to preferred soccer width. That will be necessary during the lengthy 'Castle Yates-side' maneuver during which, over the span of like a decade, they rebuilt Yates on top of the current Shaw Field, and the soccer teams have to to play on MSF/Cooper Field. Also, the campus plan calls for extensive construction around Harbin and otherwise generally on that east side of the field.Maximum flexibility for staging and the like is important. Of course, between Covid-19 and everything else, who the hell knows anymore. Temporary, portable seating would be sufficient and appropriate. The castling of Yates could well be over a decade away. To depreciate the cost of the Kehoe Field upgrade (reported in 2018 as being between $5-10 million) will likely require a useful life for at least 5-10 years before it is torn down to accommodate the Shaw Field construction. Harbin II construction will also be delayed for years by the economic downturn and the likely delay in the capital campaign. Portable seating might not prohibit construction in and around the site. The grass berm envisioned for that space isn't happening for the reasons as described above and will lie fallow while someone tries to figure out what to do it and when it can be paid for. Of course, the idea proposed of seating in the north end zone does not appear to have made any headway. This presumes attendance demands it, of course. Brighter minds than any of us should be looking seriously at a hybrid learning model over this decade which would reduce the on-campus population enough to support the deferred maintenance needed on every dorm on the campus, but to do so would likely mean 9-18 months of downtime per property. The kind of top to bottom work needed to carry New South (built in 1957) Harbin (1964), Darnall (1964), Henle (1976), Village A (1979) and Village C (1986) into the mid 21st Century require either new dorms to cover moving older dorms offline, or a reduction of on-campus student populations to relieve the capacity. Given the University's typical opacity when it comes to such things, it's hard to tell what the timetables are for any sort of additional construction in and around Cooper Field. A cursory look would suggest that you're right, there doesn't seem to be a reason why you couldn't have temporary bleachers there... but there may well be other considerations at play. I will note that longer-term plans for that area included a thorough re-do of the 'Harbin Podium' to replace the Facilities space with something more befitting a central campus pedestrian corridor. The street itself was meant to get a thorough, tree-lined makeover that made it pedestrian first, service vehicle second, and through traffic never. Who knows what the timing and status of any of those things is. With respect to the dorms, the 'flex space' building that would go adjacent to Harbin atop the podium - or, in other versions, next to Regents - would provide the additional housing capacity necessary to take another residence hall off-line for an extended period of renovation.
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eb59
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Post by eb59 on Jun 22, 2020 17:13:16 GMT -5
Anyone know what happened to the old bleachers? I would assume that they ended up in the trash, but from my perspective...it seems that they could have been recycled and moved over without too much effort to become the Visitor stands.
This would have been in my opinion a reasonably cheap method for providing actually a pretty nice and yet temporary (movable) option for the next 5-10 years until all of the other stuff discussed above gets finalized and completed.
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Jul 20, 2020 11:29:13 GMT -5
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Jul 21, 2020 12:04:28 GMT -5
They’re continuing to make progress construction-wise, and the hill in the north end zone looks pretty nice. Saw a worker doing something with the wiring on the scoreboard yesterday, but cant tell if that’s preparation to take it down, or what.
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Sept 25, 2020 13:49:44 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Sept 27, 2020 11:18:42 GMT -5
It's a useful peace as such things go, if for nothing else than the utterly-detached-from-reality-even-in-2005 quote from Bob Benson: That quote alone is grounds for immediate termination. Anyway, what I find frustrating about this piece - and I know I'm probably asking too much of any Georgetown student journalist here - is that there's clearly some sort of deeper story as to why this took 15+ years to complete, but that story is only hinted at. For example, there are several references to bureaucracy, both University and governmental (e.g., the Old Georgetown Board). And there's DFW's quote about other projects essentially skipping ahead of the stadium on the order of priority. But how, exactly, did all these things fit together?
Here's my rough understanding of what happened: 1. Just as there are different approaches to project construction (e.g., design-build vs. design-bid-build), there are different approaches to fundraising as well. The University decided to take a phased approach, the idea being to use initial fundraising and the hooplah of a groundbreaking to generate momentum for donations for the more extensive phases. 2. That momentum did not materialize. The teams were bad, Benson went away, and his successor was, uh, not exactly a silver-tongued fundraiser. If the stadium were the only major capital priority going, maybe more money would have flowed, but as DFW mentioned, Hariri and Regents were consuming a lot of the focus during this time. 3. Then the Global Recession hit. The lack of discussion of that event is the most glaring weakness in the article. Recall that they had to stop construction on Regents for quite awhile. It was an extremely challenging time financially, and a new stadium simply was not going to be a priority. 4. Around the same time, we had the 2010 Campus Plan War. That fiasco led the University, having realized just how far behind the curve it was when it came to deliberate planning, to embark on a multi-year master planning effort led by Sasaki Associates. That effort put a lot of questions on the table about how various parts of campus should fit together, including the major campus corridor abutting Cooper Field on the east side. Even if they had the money in hand - and I don't think they did - they were not about to plow ahead with a project that would essentially foreclose some of those questions by setting in stone certain facts on the ground, as it were. There is a reference to this corridor concept in the piece: This came up previously when we were discussing why there aren't any visitor side stands. Depending on the specific plans for this corridor, the future of the Harbin Podium, etc. there may not be as much flexibility here as there seems at first glance. Anyway, continuing on... 5. Another side effect of the Campus Plan War and its aftermath was growing student demands to prioritize student space and renovations of existing dorms over new construction. Just from an optics and campus politics perspective, prioritizing *two* varsity athletics projects in such an environment would've been very challenging. So instead the Thompson Center got the full institutional backing and Cooper Field remained on the backburner. 6. Then we had the Cooper donation. From what I understand, the structure of this financial commitment is...complex. Suffice it to say, it's not like they just handed over a check for $50,000,000. There was additional fundraising to be done, as noted in this piece from late 2017: As funding becomes available indeed. 7. Finally, the urgency from what should be one of the key constituencies for this project was tempered in the form of including dedicated lacrosse locker rooms in the Thompson Center. I don't know this for a fact, but I have to think that at some point, plans for the stadium included not just football (and, as was news to me from the piece, field hockey) locker rooms, but also the other teams for whom the stadium serves as home. But allowing lax to escape the terrible conditions in McDonough to world-class digs in the TAC, while probably a wise decision, also made the stadium less of a critical issue from the perspective of that community.
So there we have it. Now we're again in the thick of a major economic crisis (not to mention public health crisis, political crisis, social crisis... and so on). It's unlikely any new construction projects will be kicked off anytime soon, though work on the massive hospital complex continues apace and is more than enough to satisfy those who love the smell of cement in the morning. It's a good thing this final push to complete the stadium took place when it did, or else the saga might've lasted another five years.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Sept 27, 2020 14:15:10 GMT -5
A few thoughts: 1. Bob Benson's quote was a little out of context. He often referenced "the most important athletics addition to this campus in the last 50 years" given that no permanent intercollegiate facility had been constructed since McDonough Gymnasium in 1951. Benson sold the MSF at every opportunity but that ended when Bernard Muir came on board, and Benson was gone three months later. I'm not sure it's a deeper story, but one of the underdiscussed featues of this story is the change in athletic leadership. Joe Lang was working on greenlighting four different athletics projects in the early 2000's and none quickly materialized: 1. Multi Sport Facility ($11 million publicly raised en route to $22 million quoted) 2. Convocation Center 3. A dedicated track and soccer facility 4. The "b" word at Georgetown...the boathouse. Bernard Muir came on board and he wasn't invested in any of these. At 37, it might have been presumptuous for Georgetown to think he was going to be a lifer, but he was headed out in just over three years. Georgetown then went over a year without any athletic director (athletics running through Dan Porterfield) and by the time Lee Reed comes on board, the Thompson Center was the #1, #2, and #3 priority, although the pace of fundraising (nearly nine years to raise the money) was not lost at the higher levels of the University. The Cooper gift put the MSF back in the discussion. 2. The OGB and CFA reviews were not major impediments. As it did not involve expansion of interior square footage and was not visible from outside the gates, the approvals changed when the numerous architectural diagrams changed. 3. The lacrosse issue is conjecture--it was originally sold as a partnership of football and lacrosse constituencies, but Urick's departure changed that and I've never heard much to suggest Warne is a major backer of the project. Like many support clubs, men's basketball included, those groups are much less visible these days. 4. I think Georgetown sold itself as to the "world-class" designation of the Thompson Center when, in fact, it got Georgetown from the stone age to the point where everyone else already is. There are facilities that are certainly more expansive in the SEC and Big 10. 5. It also didn't help that Georgetown still suffers from, as Hall of Famer Frank Leahy called it while as an assistant coach at GU in 1931, "an institutional coolness toward football", and to this day I don't get it. Maybe it's because I'm not from the East, but a consistently good football team doesn't turn Georgetown into Auburn or that somehow a group of Georgetown "hostesses" (explanatory link here) will descend upon recruits. If Georgetown went ahead with the cash in hand to build the MSF in 2003, this is built by 2005 and paid off by the end of the decade...the last one. A great basketball team brings honor and respect to the University. A great soccer team brings honor and respect to the University. A great lacrosse team brings honor and respect to the University. A great football team even at the I-AA level is no less aspirant to represent the University well, and GU continues to treat it otherwise. The perception is Georgetown views football the way it treated men's basketball in the 1960's--they always hoped it would be good, but had no good idea how to do so. So instead of playing Villanova and Richmond, or taking one for the team with a game at Army or Navy (as every other Patriot school does), Georgetown schedules low...Marist and Catholic are not our peers. Construction at Georgetown goes to the squeakiest wheel. If JT III does not go to the Final Four in 2007, does the Thompson Center ever get built?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Sept 27, 2020 23:33:26 GMT -5
4. I think Georgetown sold itself as to the "world-class" designation of the Thompson Center when, in fact, it got Georgetown from the stone age to the point where everyone else already is. There are facilities that are certainly more expansive in the SEC and Big 10. To be clear, I'm using "world-class" only with respect to the "world" of college lacrosse. During the Coach's Corner session the other day, Dave Nolan said he believed our soccer locker rooms in the TAC were the best in the country. I expect something similar holds true for lacrosse in a way that it does not for the revenue sports of football and basketball. 5. It also didn't help that Georgetown still suffers from, as Hall of Famer Frank Leahy called it while as an assistant coach at GU in 1931, "an institutional coolness toward football", and to this day I don't get it. Maybe it's because I'm not from the East, but a consistently good football team doesn't turn Georgetown into Auburn or that somehow a group of Georgetown "hostesses" (explanatory link here) will descend upon recruits. If Georgetown went ahead with the cash in hand to build the MSF in 2003, this is built by 2005 and paid off by the end of the decade...the last one. You're right about the institutional coolness, but I think it's less about where you are not from - the East - and more about where you are, at least now (I have no idea if you're from the Metroplex originally or not?). You know as well as anyone the various arguments that led to almost all of the major Catholic schools cancelling their programs in the middle of the last century. Those arguments, updated for the modern era and now largely secular, remain operative in the contemporary discourse of academia. We've talked about this topic endlessly over the years at this point, but the short-form version is that, as far as the median academic is concerned, the only ways for an institution to not sell its soul when it comes to college football is to either A) Keep it small-fry (the Ivy/Georgetown model) or B) Have so much money at your disposal that you can both spend lavishly on supporting the players and also credibly argue that the whole enterprise is something other than a money-making scheme posing as amateur athletics (the Stanford/Northwestern/Duke model). A great basketball team brings honor and respect to the University. A great soccer team brings honor and respect to the University. A great lacrosse team brings honor and respect to the University. A great football team even at the I-AA level is no less aspirant to represent the University well, and GU continues to treat it otherwise. The ivory tower perspective on such things really does depend on the extent to which the program is perceived as exploitative. Football is seen as by far the most exploitative, due to both the amount of money involved and the danger to the players. Basketball largely lacks the danger component, but has an even stronger racial dimension to it than football (that component is, obviously, not a one-dimensional one, as John Thompson's deflated basketball speaks to... but there aren't a hell of a lot of John Thompsons out there). Soccer, with its global professional structure and the ability to go pro while still in high school, does not have the same whiff of exploitation. Neither does lacrosse, for different reasons. The perception is Georgetown views football the way it treated men's basketball in the 1960's--they always hoped it would be good, but had no good idea how to do so. So instead of playing Villanova and Richmond, or taking one for the team with a game at Army or Navy (as every other Patriot school does), Georgetown schedules low...Marist and Catholic are not our peers. The use of the word "good" here is glossing over a major discrepancy in what the hopes were for the respective programs, I think. The hopes for Georgetown Football are for it to fill the same role on the Hilltop that it does at the Ivies. That's... really about it. The problem is that when you try to run the Ivy model with nowhere near Ivy money, what you get is in some ways closer to Marist than Colgate.
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