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Post by reformation on Oct 10, 2015 14:18:25 GMT -5
Agree w/ Russky. The Hoya lacks any kind of perspective as usual. Donors will generally give to things they want to support for major gifts-The donor in this case is obviously close to the football program and wants to support it-I'd be willing to bet he'd not be interested in providing any kind of major gift to support something he's not that concerned about. They should join in rejoicing re: the gift!
Gtwn would actually be a lot better off if they'd be flexible regarding accepting donor sponsored efforts. A few donors will give blindly but most institutions, especially gtwn, do not have a lot of these. Yale, Har etc probably have a longer list of donors who will blindly support efforts at the univ direction, but those types of institutions have a track record of excellence across the board that Gtwn does not have.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Oct 10, 2015 22:19:17 GMT -5
Where was the Hoya complaining about the poor state of our athletic facilities when Regents Hall was being built? Athletes probably make up a larger portion of the student body than majors in the sciences.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 11, 2015 16:09:23 GMT -5
Agree w/ Russky. The Hoya lacks any kind of perspective as usual. Donors will generally give to things they want to support for major gifts-The donor in this case is obviously close to the football program and wants to support it-I'd be willing to bet he'd not be interested in providing any kind of major gift to support something he's not that concerned about. They should join in rejoicing re: the gift! Gtwn would actually be a lot better off if they'd be flexible regarding accepting donor sponsored efforts. A few donors will give blindly but most institutions, especially gtwn, do not have a lot of these. Yale, Har etc probably have a longer list of donors who will blindly support efforts at the univ direction, but those types of institutions have a track record of excellence across the board that Gtwn does not have. For big money donations, there's usually some conversation and negotiation that goes on, but my sense is that Advancement is very much willing to accede to donor preferences. They never want to leave money on the table, regardless of where the donor's interests lie. I know some instances where it hasn't worked out, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. The flip side of that is that it does make it more challenging to achieve strategic priorities quickly - see, for instance, the severe underperformance of the financial aid pillar of the campaign, while the most grab-bag pillar exceeded its target. As usual, the differences of opinion and distance between parties are not really that great, but they require clear, strategic messaging to get everyone on the same page and bought in. They've tried to do that with this gift, stressing the leadership program and the many uses of the stadium. Still, at a time when many students feel like their dorms are badly in need of renovation and their library is barely adequate (not to mention any of the other wishlist items that would find broad student and other stakeholder support), a gift like this requires particularly good explanation of how it ties into the university's mission, values, and vision. Jack is pretty good at that when prompted, but I think there's still plenty of room for improvement from an overall messaging perspective, especially messaging toward the campus community.
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Post by reformation on Oct 13, 2015 13:04:10 GMT -5
I know its off topic to the thread but by approx. how much are the fin aid gifts short of the campaign target. Also what do people think are the main causes of the shortfall.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 13, 2015 13:43:01 GMT -5
I know its off topic to the thread but by approx. how much are the fin aid gifts short of the campaign target. Also what do people think are the main causes of the shortfall. campaign.georgetown.edu/progress.html
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 13, 2015 16:45:25 GMT -5
Also what do people think are the main causes of the shortfall. I asked this question of a senior-ish administrator a couple of weeks ago. I posited that the lack of naming opportunities for scholarships, since we don't do academic merit aid, was a major factor. She actually disputed that and also disputed the notion that our alumni base is somehow not inclined or predisposed to donating for scholarships. For what it's worth, her take was that the Office of Advancement prioritizes whatever is at the top of the to-do list in the President's Office. Although in theory financial aid is a top priority - that's why it's one of the campaign pillars - in practice it is a large, shapeless, undefined money pit that is mostly filled by general/unrestricted donations. The real priorities are concrete, planned out projects that can be presented and sold in a detailed way. I would generally agree with that, although I think the inherent nature of financial aid giving does have a lot to do with it. Advancement offices prefer whatever constitutes a gift that can be neatly packaged, with a ribbon tied around it, and readily advertised. Some of that has more than a little to do with resume-building for development staff - you land your next job by assembling a portfolio of great-sounding big-ticket donations - naming gifts, endowed chairs and scholarships, etc. Donations to the giant financial aid pot don't lend themselves to that. But even without the self-interested aspect, it's still the case that selling someone on "throw your $5 million into a giant money pool!" is a lot harder than "for $5 million, you get X named after you in perpetuity!" It's one reason why they started offering the possibility of naming GSP awards and basically treating them as if they were scholarships.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 19, 2015 14:36:40 GMT -5
Does anyone know if/what hurdles the local govt bodies might be able to throw in on the stadium front? I think I remember that a previously proposed stadium was part of a blessed campus plan- but if we are using a new design as it seems, is that really covered? I think Russky mentioned that we don't have much to worry about since this is a re-model- but surely that means we can't increase the size in a meaningful way right? Clearly we can't re-model it into the Rose bowl- what about doubling current capacity which still only brings us to about 5k?
I'm wondering how much capacity is in our hands as I'm hoping two games in a row with 3K person crowds in a 2500 seat facility illustrate the need to aim a bit higher than 4500 seats- the last capacity number I remember seeing on one of the renderings. But it would seem as though there's no way we can increase capacity from the campus plan that was already approved so is it possible we are stuck with 4500 tops? What's the over/under on when we see renderings from the final design? End of year? Spring? 2016?
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Post by dundermifflinhoya on Oct 19, 2015 19:38:09 GMT -5
The proposal/re-design should be done by the design firm in next week or two weeks. Not sure what happens after that as far as the planning stages. The tentative plan is to use the visitor section next year as seating (will add a press box) while the home section is completed by 2017. Then the visiting side will be completed. New stadium will have home/away locker rooms and public restrooms. Will keep in line with the previous design concepts of the brick facades. No final call on the size. My guess would be 6000 range. My hope is that they open the grassy knoll in the west end zone for spectators. Would be a great student section or place for families. In the end, I am confidant this will be a stadium we can be proud of when completed.
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Post by strummer8526 on Oct 19, 2015 20:04:06 GMT -5
The Hoya tries to do its usual contratian thing and splash some cold water on the jubilation, but they can't quite muster up the fire for real pushback: What is "a disability cultural center"?
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 20, 2015 8:21:50 GMT -5
The proposal/re-design should be done by the design firm in next week or two weeks. Not sure what happens after that as far as the planning stages. The tentative plan is to use the visitor section next year as seating (will add a press box) while the home section is completed by 2017. Then the visiting side will be completed. New stadium will have home/away locker rooms and public restrooms. Will keep in line with the previous design concepts of the brick facades. No final call on the size. My guess would be 6000 range. My hope is that they open the grassy knoll in the west end zone for spectators. Would be a great student section or place for families. In the end, I am confidant this will be a stadium we can be proud of when completed. Which design with the brick facades? From memory the final design we saw (as they all got cheaper and cheaper) didn't seem to have much structure or brick other than the press box/suites portion and the fencing columns which are already there. $.02 alert: Why not move the current home stands (they are temporary after all) to the visitor's side while they build out the permanent stadium on the home side? They already have press boxes and are decent size. What does the current visitor's side hold? like 700? Possible to put the current visitor's side in one of the end-zones? If no room in either endzone, we can probable still stack both on same side; both home and visitor's stands side by side. That way we would still have 3K capacity next year. Part of me wonders whether if the current home stands are being considered as the future visitor's section as a cost savings. If it means the home stand is prioritized and made bigger and nicer I'd be open to that. Especially as it leaves open the possibility of expanding by creating a larger visitor's section well down the line if we need it.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 20, 2015 16:35:43 GMT -5
Does anyone know if/what hurdles the local govt bodies might be able to throw in on the stadium front? I think I remember that a previously proposed stadium was part of a blessed campus plan- but if we are using a new design as it seems, is that really covered? I think Russky mentioned that we don't have much to worry about since this is a re-model- but surely that means we can't increase the size in a meaningful way right? Clearly we can't re-model it into the Rose bowl- what about doubling current capacity which still only brings us to about 5k? I'm wondering how much capacity is in our hands as I'm hoping two games in a row with 3K person crowds in a 2500 seat facility illustrate the need to aim a bit higher than 4500 seats- the last capacity number I remember seeing on one of the renderings. But it would seem as though there's no way we can increase capacity from the campus plan that was already approved so is it possible we are stuck with 4500 tops? What's the over/under on when we see renderings from the final design? End of year? Spring? 2016? Any sort of construction would require plenty of separate approvals anyway - being in the Campus Plan doesn't let you avoid those, it just makes it more likely (though not certain) that you'll make it past the neighbor veto and regulatory approval gauntlet when it comes time to actually get things underway. I think that as long as we stick to the usage restrictions that exist now, an expansion of capacity up to 6,000 (or even higher, potentially) should not be objectionable. The noise shouldn't be much different, traffic impacts on the neighborhood are pretty limited with everything coming out of Canal Road, and I can't recall hearing any objections to MSF usage over the last several years. In terms of the number of people on campus, it would probably still be lower than the number of people here for Commencement no matter what. If the OGB and other bodies let MSF happen, they will surely approve any more polished design to take its place.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Nov 12, 2015 11:57:22 GMT -5
What's the over/under on when we will see some renderings of the final stadium design? By year end? Before graduation? Isn't construction meant to start very soon?
What's everyone's best guess on final stated capacity? I'm hoping its 6-7k but my hunch tells me it will stay at 4500 which is the last number we saw.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Nov 12, 2015 15:45:40 GMT -5
What's the over/under on when we will see some renderings of the final stadium design? By year end? Before graduation? Isn't construction meant to start very soon? What's everyone's best guess on final stated capacity? I'm hoping its 6-7k but my hunch tells me it will stay at 4500 which is the last number we saw. FWIW, here are the 2014 attendance averages for Ivy and Patriot League schools, followed by the seating capacity of their stadiums. Yale: 15,193 (64,246) Harvard: 15,018 (30,323) Princeton: 9,865 (27,773) Penn: 8,720 (52,958) Holy Cross: 6,748 (23,000) Cornell: 6,647 (25,597) Lehigh: 6,249 (16,000) Lafayette: 6,054 (13,132) Brown: 5,756 (20,000) Columbia: 5,576 (17,000) Dartmouth: 5,549 (13,000) Colgate: 4,844 (10,221) Fordham: 4,663 (8,000) Bucknell: 3,530 (13,100) Georgetown: 2,124 (2,500) Median attendance for the Patriot/Ivy schools is 6,054. Average attendance is 7,102. I think it's reasonable to ask whether Georgetown can sustain crowds of 6,000-7,000, or whether a 6K-7K stadium would consistently be 25%-50% empty. I have not been to the vast majority of these stadiums, but I imagine that going to a Penn game must feel similar to going to a Rice game (average attendance 18,562, stadium capacity 70,000). And that's not a super-fun live sporting event environment IMHO. I guess that on one hand, Georgetown's current seating capacity is completely embarrassing. And even if GU built a 7,000 seat stadium, we would still be the university with the smallest seating capacity on the list above. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether building seats for the sake of building seats helps create a fun game environment. I guess my hope is that we build a 7,000 seat stadium and that we fill it. But I don't know whether that's a reasonable thought or not, and I'm not sure how to go about projecting future attendance for Georgetown football.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Nov 12, 2015 16:26:07 GMT -5
I share your concerns about going too big and the resulting ding to atmosphere. You are correct that Franklin Field while a historical landmark feels like a graveyard for even the biggest games of the year. And Princeton surely was fighting the last war when they built their new stadium way too big to even come close to selling out every other year for the Yale game. I've long thought that Yale needs to shave off 20K seats in the endzones so that the place isn't so depressing for every non-Harvard game....Hence why I'm not asking for a 15K or even 10K stadium. I really don't think 6K is too much if we intend to keep playing Ivy league teams and continue to improve even incrementally.
Put another way even this year we had back to back games at 130% of capacity. I think it would be rather silly to after so many years of delay build something real and only pick up 1-2K increase in capacity. If we can get 3k in the current joke of a facility its fair to say we could expect to get 5-6 with even modest improvement on the field combined with an huge leap in facility/environment quality.
I think a good balance might be a home side that holds 4-5k, an away side that holds 1k and potential bowl grassy overflow area in the endzone towards Leavey- which seems to be already included in the new campus plan. If we are worried that a 5000 seat home stand is going to look empty then we probably should not be spending millions on a college stadium. Lets not be too gun-shy. And don't forget this going to be the largest facility capacity-wise at a University with 14K students and many more parents. It can't be only 4K after getting over 3K in a 2.5K junkshow twice in a row when the team was thought to be pretty bad.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Nov 12, 2015 22:12:40 GMT -5
I share your concerns about going too big and the resulting ding to atmosphere. You are correct that Franklin Field while a historical landmark feels like a graveyard for even the biggest games of the year. And Princeton surely was fighting the last war when they built their new stadium way too big to even come close to selling out every other year for the Yale game. I've long thought that Yale needs to shave off 20K seats in the endzones so that the place isn't so depressing for every non-Harvard game....Hence why I'm not asking for a 15K or even 10K stadium. I really don't think 6K is too much if we intend to keep playing Ivy league teams and continue to improve even incrementally. Put another way even this year we had back to back games at 130% of capacity. I think it would be rather silly to after so many years of delay build something real and only pick up 1-2K increase in capacity. If we can get 3k in the current joke of a facility its fair to say we could expect to get 5-6 with even modest improvement on the field combined with an huge leap in facility/environment quality. I think a good balance might be a home side that holds 4-5k, an away side that holds 1k and potential bowl grassy overflow area in the endzone towards Leavey- which seems to be already included in the new campus plan. If we are worried that a 5000 seat home stand is going to look empty then we probably should not be spending millions on a college stadium. Lets not be too gun-shy. And don't forget this going to be the largest facility capacity-wise at a University with 14K students and many more parents. It can't be only 4K after getting over 3K in a 2.5K junkshow twice in a row when the team was thought to be pretty bad. The away side is what's driving those numbers, though. So a 4K home side and a 1K away side would start to look pretty odd for the Ivy games you're talking about.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Nov 13, 2015 9:46:48 GMT -5
Make it 4k and 2k then. Home side needs to be substantially larger even if it occasionally means a few away fans sit on the home side. If we're filling out 6k seats in that event it would be a nice problem to have. I also don't agree that its only the visiting fans driving the sell outs- I think that GU students/alumni come out in greater numbers to see Ivies on campus too.
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Post by hoyadad19 on Dec 3, 2015 17:01:25 GMT -5
Has anyone heard of a final design for the new stadium and has it been posted somewhere on the GT website? I hope they are shooting for completion by 18 months from the first of October (I believe I saw 12-18 months when the gift was announced).
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 12, 2016 11:02:12 GMT -5
Does anyone have any clue when we are going to see some renderings or heaven forbid start construction? A bit disappointing we have not seen anything several months after such a promising announcement that specifically noted a quick construction turn around.
"As permanent recognition of the Coopers’ generosity, the three-year-old student-athlete leadership initiative will be named the Cooper Athletics Leadership Program and the existing Multi-Sport Field will be renamed Cooper Field when it is completed in an estimated 12 to 18 months......"........12-18 months from when? What's it going to look like? What will it hold? The announcement was more than 3 months ago and since then crickets.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jan 12, 2016 12:10:09 GMT -5
Does anyone have any clue when we are going to see some renderings or heaven forbid start construction? A bit disappointing we have not seen anything several months after such a promising announcement that specifically noted a quick construction turn around. No inside information, merely a guess: with all hands on deck to get the IAC and NE Triangle completed, I would not expect any significant movement on this project before the summer. It's also likely that the myriad of MSF architectural plans discussed, theorized, or submitted over the past 15 years are all out of date and new plans must be drawn and sent through the ANC and OGB process. In summary, that seat I donated in 2002 isn't showing up anytime soon.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jan 12, 2016 12:32:50 GMT -5
Does anyone have any clue when we are going to see some renderings or heaven forbid start construction? A bit disappointing we have not seen anything several months after such a promising announcement that specifically noted a quick construction turn around. No inside information, merely a guess: with all hands on deck to get the IAC and NE Triangle completed, I would not expect any significant movement on this project before the summer. It's also likely that the myriad of MSF architectural plans discussed, theorized, or submitted over the past 15 years are all out of date and new plans must be drawn and sent through the ANC and OGB process. In summary, that seat I donated in 2002 isn't showing up anytime soon. The hands building the IAC and NET Hall are, obviously, not the same hands that draft and update architectural plans and renderings, develop submissions for regulatory review and approval, file permit applications, create construction drawings, etc. There's no reason why they can't pursue these projects in parallel. This is also not an especially high LOE project, as these things go. There's no digging down several stories for foundation and basement; there's no need for extensive utility relocation and connection; there's minimal wiring, life safety systems, and insulation; etc. etc. We ain't building Jerryworld here. So the actual construction timeframe will not be all that long - certainly much shorter than a residence hall.
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