Site plan for new facilities leaked

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Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by AuricGoldfinger »

Nothing earth-shattering here, but it's more than what we saw at the announcement:

[tweet][/tweet]


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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by cjdore »

Looks like more of putting a band aid on an open wound
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by vandy05 »

cjdore wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 2:24 pm Looks like more of putting a band aid on an open wound
Yep, brand new dedicated indoor practice facility for the football team. Brand new football operations building that is attached to the stadium. $300M capital plan. Terrible little bandaid :roll:
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by VUinFL »

do you suppose the football operations building will nestle under the stadium grandstand and perhaps leak outside the stadium footprint or do you think it will replace seating?

It is definitely depicted as following the footprint of the current stadium.

Maybe we're looking at a football operations office with suites on the field side and the elimination of the general seating in that area. That makes the most sense.

Also, it looks like the basketball building will be right on top of the Parmer Fieldhouse...I don't know the history of that building, will they have to pick it up and move it somewhere?
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by historybill »

Why does the team need a new indoor practice facility when the last large thing Vanderbilt built was an indoor practice facility?

And what is going to happen to the "old" but still new indoor practice facility?
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by DS2001 »

Looks like that football Operations building will encompass most of the South endzone and will displace 4,000 or so seats. There probably will be premium seating/boxes/observation plaza built on the top of the facility, so I would say the stadium size, when finished will shrink to around 37,000.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by NWOHDore »

historybill wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:20 pm
And what is going to happen to the "old" but still new indoor practice facility?
The current indoor facility is shared with other sports and will continue to be utilized by them. If I'm not mistaken, the current indoor facility doesn't have a full 120 yard long field (I believe the corners of the endzones are cut off and it may be truncated elsewhere as well), which the new one will. The current facility is also located at the rec center, and is inconvenient and inefficient for moving equipment from McGugin and the outdoor fields. I believe Coach Lea stated as much at the start of spring practice when weather forced them to make an impromptu switch from outdoors to indoors.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by katmai »

From the rendering, it looks like the new indoor facility is going to be smaller than the existing one, and as NWOHDore pointed out, the current indoor facility really isn't an ideal size.

I also wonder if having the football operations facility as part of the stadium like that would restrict foot traffic flow within the stadium on game day.

Is the area where the proposed operations facility is located the current site of the stadium locker rooms? If so, you would still need an area for the stadium home and visitor locker rooms, which would eat up a lot of room. Could you move the visitor locker rooms somewhere else? I guess if you took out the stands, you would have a lot of room there.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by historybill »

I can't believe that only 10 years ago they built an indoor practice facility that wasn't good enough.

The stadium was built in the mid 1920s and last renovated when I was a senior in high school in 1982.

I have a feeling that as they approach people with real money to donate, they are going to get questions about replacing the thing they just built 10 years ago instead of the thing they built 100 years ago.

Also... was Parmer Fieldhouse originally a residence, or did Vanderbilt build it in the McGugin days?
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by Seadog73 »

As for the rec center - here's some perspective on the planning that went into that. The women's swimming team CAN'T use it for training AT ALL. They have to go across West End Avenue to the Centennial Sportsplex to train there. WHY? Because the pool in the rec cent was built so that competitive swimming can't take place there - too shallow at one end with steps and ladders. The indoor practice facility is similar, they built it to accommodate an indoor track which truncated the length of the field, among other things. And it is used by multiple sports.

As for the football Ops Center. Previous public comments from VU strongly suggest it won't take ANY seats, as it will be built under the stadium, replacing the structural girders, as has been done at other schools (sorry, too lazy to look them up).
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by alathIN »

historybill wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:20 pm Why does the team need a new indoor practice facility when the last large thing Vanderbilt built was an indoor practice facility?

And what is going to happen to the "old" but still new indoor practice facility?
The current indoor practice facility does not belong to the football team. It belongs to the university and is shared with soccer, lacrosse, intramural sports, and students/faculty/staff. There are scheduling issues and it's too far away to move quickly from outdoors to indoors if there is an occurrence of Nashville weather.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by alathIN »

Seadog73 wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:00 pm As for the football Ops Center. Previous public comments from VU strongly suggest it won't take ANY seats, as it will be built under the stadium, replacing the structural girders, as has been done at other schools (sorry, too lazy to look them up).
This is all thirdhand rumors (at best) but the buzz I've heard is that it will include some suites facing the stadium side. That's on the wish list anyway.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by VandyfanKY »

Looking at what the architectural firm designed for Missouri and Utah, the south end seating area may in fact be roughly the same as now, but the square footage per seat will (hopefully) rise to modern standards, both in terms of seat width and distance between rows. Stadium capacity will have to drop, but it's a fair tradeoff in my view.

Based on the prior designs at the other schools, expect a mix of club, loge, and general seating as well as new suites and other premium areas. That opens up existing premium seating on the west side.

These new end zone designs tend to be about 50 feet high (up to five stories) and extend further south (in our case toward Jess Neely Drive), so all football operations should be contained within the structure.

The basketball operations center will need to offer ground level access for the NE corner of the football stadium, perhaps an opportunity to offer more restrooms and concession areas on the north side of the stadium as well as for roundball.

The indoor practice area has me puzzled. The space is narrow for a building. Perhaps the idea is a retractable "bubble" similar to what Princeton did. Will have to wait for more details, but overall this is most encouraging.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by geeznotagain »

Seadog73 wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:00 pm As for the rec center - here's some perspective on the planning that went into that. The women's swimming team CAN'T use it for training AT ALL. They have to go across West End Avenue to the Centennial Sportsplex to train there. WHY? Because the pool in the rec cent was built so that competitive swimming can't take place there - too shallow at one end with steps and ladders.

OK, I will admit that I am embarrassed about this and will humbly accept any due criticism. But am I the only one who didn't realize that we even had a women's swim team? :oops: As I said, I am truly embarrassed.

After reading this post I quickly went to vucommodores.com to make sure VU hadn't also added softball or volleyball while I was napping. I'm happy to report that swimming was the only gap in my mouthfull of VU Sports Teeth. Now for many of the sports I couldn't name the current coach or a single player, but I think that's proably true of most of us. Isn't it? (If not I feel really,really bad.)
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by Seadog73 »

LOL geeznotagain!! Well done.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by MikenNashville »

VUinFL wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:11 pm Also, it looks like the basketball building will be right on top of the Parmer Fieldhouse...I don't know the history of that building, will they have to pick it up and move it somewhere?
From what I read on the VU site, the Parmer field house was constructed in 1922 coinciding with the “new” stadium and housed the home and visitors locker rooms and showers. It was used as such into the 1960’s. During the 1980-81 rebuild Roy Kramer and others didn’t want it demolished as it was still in good original condition and some thought it would be a good place to house a Vanderbilt football museum - which obviously didn’t happen. Apparently years later a descendent of the Parmer it was named after looked at donating to making the museum a reality but by then it had deteriorated so much he didn’t think it could be salvaged.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by charlestonalum »

cjdore wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 2:24 pm Looks like more of putting a band aid on an open wound
WHAT? Closing 1 end zone and part of another, building new indoor football practice facility - all that is a bandaid?
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by BILTMORE »

I'm happy we're investing in athletics.
I'm lukewarm on the idea of putting the football administration upgrades into that stadium, the thing that really needs to be replaced in toto.
Though I'm happy to hear that this renovation will actually involve a rebuild and seat re-apportionment of that 1/3 of the stadium, it does highlight the insurmountable flaws that exist in the remaining 2/3rds of the venue: the seat spacing, concourse space, and the sight lines. There is no amount of pig lipstick (or bathrooms) that can fix the front-to-back seat depth, the cutoff views of the end zones, and the constipated crowd flow into and around the stadium. In fact, the new facilities may in fact make the in-game crowd flow even worse.

But I'll remain optimistic until I'm not.

Hell, maybe long-term, we'll rebuild the stadium in phases and this is phase 1.
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by vandy05 »

VandyfanKY wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:15 pm Looking at what the architectural firm designed for Missouri and Utah, the south end seating area may in fact be roughly the same as now, but the square footage per seat will (hopefully) rise to modern standards, both in terms of seat width and distance between rows. Stadium capacity will have to drop, but it's a fair tradeoff in my view.

Based on the prior designs at the other schools, expect a mix of club, loge, and general seating as well as new suites and other premium areas. That opens up existing premium seating on the west side.

These new end zone designs tend to be about 50 feet high (up to five stories) and extend further south (in our case toward Jess Neely Drive), so all football operations should be contained within the structure.

The basketball operations center will need to offer ground level access for the NE corner of the football stadium, perhaps an opportunity to offer more restrooms and concession areas on the north side of the stadium as well as for roundball.

The indoor practice area has me puzzled. The space is narrow for a building. Perhaps the idea is a retractable "bubble" similar to what Princeton did. Will have to wait for more details, but overall this is most encouraging.
Missouri is exactly what I thought of when I saw the initial rough renderings.

Article with a depiction of what Mizzou was going for:

https://www.komu.com/news/key-piece-of- ... b1002.html
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Re: Site plan for new facilities leaked

Post by Dsdore »

Where can you find the upgrade renderings being discussed?
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