Say Goodbye to Husky Stadium
University of Washington Athletic Director Todd Turner revealed plans for the new UW football facility yesterday. (You can forget about it being called Husky Stadium anymore--we're on a downhill path toward "Onvia Field at Husky Stadium" or some similarly awful conceit).
In a nutshell: get rid of the track around the field and and replace the west end with a combination of offices for the athletic department, suites for rich people, and maybe a couple more seats for the riff-raff.
There's also drawings of a stadium without the upper deck on the west end.
One revealing quote from Turner will give you an idea of where the University is heading: "I'm tired of seeing those porta-potties down by the baseball field," he says. "That's not a quality experience."
"A quality experience" will mean a sanitized, boring facility with a new corporate name, designed by a corporate architecture firm, something that could be at any university in the nation (as you can see from the drawings--looks like Coors Field) Most importantly--there will be no indication that Husky fans poo.
A few months from now, Turner will announce the cost of the project, but from the looks of it, it ain't gonna be cheap. Corporate sponsorship is right around the corner.
For lots of boring details, you can read a series of blog posts Turner wrote.
