By this time next season, the Bobcats should have a new building to call home.
It’s been in the works for five years; has been rumored to include a track, the opposite, and back again; and has grown into a hot topic around campus.
Ohio officials are sticking to a loose timeline that has the unnamed multipurpose center opening in time for Fall Semester 2013.
Ohio Athletics has raised more than $11 million in pledges through extensive fundraising efforts — enough to build the facility without a track — but students’ General Fee money will be used to finance the addition of one, per “student recommendations” presented in a report by the General Fee Committee earProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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er this year.
Students will pay $1.5 million in General Fee money to finance the track, and $250,000 for annual maintenance.
But the students won’t feel the cost, because General Fee costs are not going to rise to accommodate the facility. It will be financed using General Fee reserve funds.
It’s been said time and again that Ohio needs an indoor facility to continue to draw recruits, line up plays during the winter and pull together loose ends in the comfort of controlled temperatures before games.
Other Mid-American Conference coaches, like Akron’s Terry Bowden, benefit from the use of a multipurpose center and say it’s among the best investments a school can make for its headlining athletic program.
“The most valuable thing we ever did at Akron was the multi-use indoor facility,” Bowden said, though he arrived long after the $17 million Louis and Freda Stile Athletics Field House was completed in 2004.
Players love the idea, too — for reasons every coach would endorse.
“It gives us players the opportunity to go inside, in a warm place, and compete,” said Korey Neal, an Eastern Michigan offensive lineman, about “The Bubble,” the Eagles’ indoor facility. “Student-athletes are going to be more compelled (to) work on our craft when we have a nice facility to work with.”
The Eagles inflated their Indoor Practice Facility — a literal bubble — in February 2010. It cost $3.9 million.
With OU’s multipurpose center’s construction many years in the making, Ohio administrators are anxiously awaiting the day they get to talk about it in the past tense.
Because Ohio Athletics is unsure of the final price tag architects will place on the facility, it is still accepting donations, though not actively seeking further financing.
“I think people don’t understand its true value, but once it’s built and they see its utility they’re going to think, ‘Wow, why didn’t we do this earlier?’” said Jim Schaus, Ohio director of Athletics.
jr992810@ohiou.edu
