BOZEMAN – Montana State University’s president is expected to ask the state Board of Regents on Wednesday to approve the first steps of an expansion of Bobcat Stadium, reversing a previous decision not to build until all the money is raised.
Waded Cruzado wants the regents to approve the project concept, allow the university to lease the southeast bleacher end-zone area to the nonprofit MSU Foundation, and allow the foundation to hire an architect and general contractor to design the expansion.
The request would reverse a decision made by former university President Geoff Gamble not to ask the regents for approval or start building until all the money has been raised for the expansion.
The project is expected to cost between $8 million and $10 million, with most of the money coming from donations to the MSU Foundation. But the proposal calls for up to $4 million in financing from the university, which school officials say would be repaid in the future through ticket sales and other athletics revenue.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that Cruzado, who took office in January, wrote in an e-mail to the campus community Monday that MSU’s plan would be a “non-student fee, non-state money plan to make improvements to the stadium.”
Her pledge echoes a similar promise MSU made in 1997 when it began expanding the stadium — a promise that was later broken.
MSU officials assumed then that if skyboxes were built and the stadium was improved, that would bring in enough additional money to pay for the expansion. It didn’t, and MSU Athletics ended up with a $1 million deficit, mainly because of the half-million-dollar yearly bond payments for the expansion.
To erase the deficit, MSU doubled the student athletic fee and dipped into the university’s general fund, which is made up of tuition and state dollars. The athletics department also raised ticket prices, raised more donations from boosters and agreed to play more “money games” against teams from bigger conferences. Over several years, the deficit was erased.
The latest proposal would expand the 12,681-seat stadium by 2,500 seats and would not include any sky suites. The corners of the stadium, now open, would be rounded off and filled in with seats, and the number of student tickets could be increased.