Working group to begin exploring options for new Auburn football facility
The Auburn Athletics Complex, which opened in 1989.
AUBURN — Auburn has taken its first significant, public step toward building a new football-only facility.
Following the events last Friday's board of trustees meeting, university president Steven Leath announced in a series of tweets Wednesday that a working group will "immediately begin exploring options" and is expected to "provide options and recommendations" to the athletics department, Board of Trustees and senior university leadership by the fall.
The working group will be chaired by the university's chief operating officer, Ron Burgess, and will include trustee Mike DeMaioribus, Tigers Unlimited board member Earlon McWhorter and other members of the school's senior leadership, who will seek input from around the Auburn community.
A working group will immediately begin exploring options for a new @AuburnFootball facility. As @CoachGusMalzahn sa… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
—
Steven Leath (@AuburnPrez) June 12, 2019The football-only complex wasn't part the agenda for last Friday's board of trustees meeting, but executive committee chairman Charles McCrary brought up the topic, telling Leath “It’s my sense of the board that everybody on the board agrees that we need to build that building."
“Mr. President, I would recommend that you, sir, that you would put together a working group, post haste of whoever you so decide, so that they can focus and determine what’s in the building, what we want in the building and how much it’s going to cost, an idea of how much it’s going to cost. And then, raise the money. We need to do this. We all agree we need to do it. We need to raise the money and we need to get on with it so we can support Auburn, our dean, and our coach," McCrary said, according to the Opelika-Auburn News.
Football coach Gus Malzahn also spoke, saying, "The project is not just big now, current, but more important for the future. It will allow us to continue to have a good chance to compete for a championship."
Leath agreed to the recommendation.
Auburn's football operations are currently housed in the athletics complex, a multi-purpose facility opened in 1989. The team's locker rooms, meeting rooms and coaches' offices share space with upper-level athletic administration offices and the business, communications, compliance, development, digital media and marketing departments.
Malzahn, who is going into his seventh season as head coach, has been pushing for a new, upgrade facility for a few years, and the requests have become louder since Allen Greene replaced Jay Jacobs as athletics director in February 2018. Malzahn and his wife, Kristi, pledged a $2 million donation to the project last fall.
The most likely site for a new building would seem to be the old track on the corner of West Samford Avenue and Biggio Drive, which is right across the street from the team's indoor practice facility and weight room that opened in 2011.
“We’re still in the planning process, I think it’s important for us to have an understanding of scale and scope,” Greene said at the SEC Spring Meetings in Miramar Beach, Florida, late last month. “Certainly understand that we want our football program to be on rock-solid footing for the future, and we’ll continue to have conversations and see where those go.”
Last year, Auburn opened a $28-million gameday facility at Jordan-Hare Stadium that featured new locker rooms, recruiting spaces, luxury clubs for fans and a press box.
The expected cost of a football-only facility is expected to be in the neighborhood of $60 million, according to a report from Auburn Undercover. Clemson's state-of-the-art facility, which was opened in January 2017, cost $55 million to construct.
"Exciting times for Auburn Football," Leath tweeted Wednesday.
Josh Vitale is the Auburn beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. You can follow him on Twitter at @JoshVitale. To reach him by email, click here.