The heat is on, the turf is down and the opening of the Walter Fieldhouse is within sight for Ohio University student-athletes.
All that’s missing: a couple hash marks on the turf and OU’s signature Bobcat insignia in its center.
That, of course, and the track, long jump pit, a drop-down netting system and other garnishings, which will be installed after Ohio Athletics finishes an early-use trial period, which runs from Mar. 10 to April 12.
Construction for the $13 million fieldhouse will be mostly finished by the time students leave for summer vacation, with a grand opening set for early fall, said Ryan Lombardi, OU vice president for Student Affairs.
Although the supersized Bobcat logo is still rolled up on the turf’s sideline, a pair of smaller on-field Pepsi embellishments have been applied to the artificial surface.
Pepsi paid $1.4 million for the on-field advertisements and similar placement on the facility’s forthcoming dual scoreboards as part of its contract with the university, Lombardi said. The sum is paid toward the fieldhouse’s overall construction cost.
The fieldhouse’s construction has been financed in part by a lead gift of $8 million by OU alumni Robert and Margaret Walter, an Athletics fundraising campaign that netted more than $3 million, and student fees.
Student fees totaling $822,000 have been dedicated to the fieldhouse this year, even though most won’t have the opportunity to use the facility until fall, according to a previous Post article.
“In the case of the nature of the Walter Fieldhouse, those are things that are being built, buildings that focus primarily on external dollars to pay for them,” said Chad Mitchell, OU’s budget director.
During the early-use trial period, OU’s athletic teams will be able to use the facility to complete their spring training. Major construction will come to a relative standstill, but workers will still be on site to complete final cosmetic touches.
“It will actually be ready in a couple weeks for multi-sport use, for some kind of light activity,” Lombardi said. “We’re not going to do full-bore stuff in here. (It will be) then complete-complete by early-to-mid-June.
“Fall will be full-swing (for) everybody — classes, intramurals, the whole nine yards.”
Early photos of the fieldhouse’s interior showed a floor that was almost entirely covered by turf, appearing to leave little space at its ends for the planned four-lane track. Workers have since cut the corners of each end zone, in keeping with previous OU blueprints, to make room for the oval as planned.
“To have a track, you want to have your bends curved as much as possible,” Lombardi said. “Obviously with this kind of footprint, we’re somewhat limited in (constructing) a competition-grade track, but we still wanted it to curve so it had some real utility for running, for practicing.”
There will also be a painted inlay on the track that will allow runners to take the most moderate curvature possible in order to emulate a competition track, he added.
Mark Ferguson, OU’s executive director of campus recreation, recently gave some of his student workers a tour of the fieldhouse. Existing campus recreation student staff will be used to staff the facility this year, but about $35,000 of the facility’s budget will be dedicated to additional student staffing once the facility is fully operational, according to a previous Post article.
“That five-week period will give our staff time to get in and get used to the facility with Athletics, and kind of get our feet wet before we open in June,” Ferguson said. “So we get a head start going into full operation.”
— Danielle Keeton-Olsen contributed to this report
— Take a photo-audio tour of the fieldhouse here.
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