Fargodome expansion meeting, Tuesday, April 18th @11:30, City Hall

[NDGooch]

The proposal in the Forum story is light on details so I will withhold a negative opinion. That said, I agree with the people saying NDSU is a primary, cost-free, user of the facility, but the interior bowl needs to be addressed.

I had to Google WTF the Minneapolis Auditorium was based on earlier, used seats, comments. I’ve lived in MSP for 20 years and never heard of it.

Post research I’m double horrified. First, that building looked amazing, and it was replaced by the Minneapolis Convention Center, puke. Second, it was demolished in 1988, so who knows when those red seats were actually made. The seats all need to go. Green and gold striped sections, sold!

I’m not saying the interior bowl needs to be US Bank level, but sweet baby Jesus if you spend $140m and don’t fix the actual arena experience you failed the taxpayers. That level of investment will force the building to be in use for another 20 years. The regional draw is the arena. You can put all the peripheral amenities on it that you want, hotel or convention center, it won’t matter if the arena drives the material economic activity.

My pipe dream after seeing the first images would be to consolidate and embrace the fan | student experience in the south end zone.

Sampling heavily from MSP stadiums, like Vanilla Ice from Queen, the south end zone should have…

1. A concourse-level walk-in viewing area, like Target Center and Target Field. All the food and drink areas are behind the concourse level are open to the field. It will create a loss of standard seating but create an end zone-wide party deck.
2. Replace the lost party deck seating by moving all the student section seating to the south end zone. Then add MN United style Wonderwall seating below the concourse to make capacity net zero.

The remodel is a must because the economic reality of a replacement building is not going to happen based on cost. If a new stadium was going to happen it would have been built 3 years ago, pre-inflation | pre-normal interest rates. Embrace the remodel and make the dome the best it can be with the best fan experience possible.

The FBS won’t care about total capacity if you have a great venue. Average annual attendance is dropping and there are recent examples of renovations eliminating seating.

The south stands can't be highly modified because they are aluminum, and are movable so the dome can have less than full show concerts. I can't see the dome giving up that ability. Any changes to endzone seating you are describing would have to be done to the north side. That I would imagine would also be a headache because I believe that is where the video control room is located. The control room could be moved somewhere else as part of the new renovation. You could offset the lost seats you get by building a north side "party space" with adding seats from removal of the north side press box.

On a different note, we went to a Redhawks game last week, and there was a large tower being built right behind the West Endzone of Dacotah Field. It looked to be a new cell tower, but we could be totally wrong. It is in a weird spot to be anything else, unless they are replacing the lighting towers as part of the upgrade for soccer. Seemed like an odd place for a lighting tower though.

[roadwarrior]

The south stands can't be highly modified because they are aluminum, and are movable so the dome can have less than full show concerts. I can't see the dome giving up that ability. Any changes to endzone seating you are describing would have to be done to the north side. That I would imagine would also be a headache because I believe that is where the video control room is located. The control room could be moved somewhere else as part of the new renovation. You could offset the lost seats you get by building a north side "party space" with adding seats from removal of the north side press box.

On a different note, we went to a Redhawks game last week, and there was a large tower being built right behind the West Endzone of Dacotah Field. It looked to be a new cell tower, but we could be totally wrong. It is in a weird spot to be anything else, unless they are replacing the lighting towers as part of the upgrade for soccer. Seemed like an odd place for a lighting tower though.

I am pretty sure the video control room was moved several years ago. It is no longer under the north seats.

The tower in the R lot is a temporary cell tower. Nothing to do with NDSU, except they are probably getting some rent. The reason is the red and white water tower on 10th street is going to be removed. The cell providers are losing that structure to mount their hardware.

[Bison03]

Rob Sobolik was on with Izzo this morning to talk about this. I encourage all to listen. He mentioned wifi and stated that it costs about 800k-1 million and need to be renewed every 4-5 years and that it need to be looked at as if it fits into budgets. Didnt say it is off the table, just stating the tacts. Also mentioned that updating seats was likely; please God at minimum get rid of the red seats. New seats (which should be green in my opinion) would cost 4-5 million. If you are going to spend 140 million, might as spend 4 more as this would really make it feel like and upgrade. What people need to realize is that this is not only about making the experience of Bison football games better, which it will, but to make all events there better. Bison football is there at most 9 days a year. There are 356 other days that events happen there. A lot of talk about increasing seats ad well. One, last I checked, we aren’t selling out anymore and there are plenty of seats available. And secondly, a potential FBS move would not require additional seating requirements. The Fargodome is not in the business of making NDSU an FBS team, and whatever the home of the Bison football team looks like has zero, yes zero impact on if an FBS conference invites NDSU. Look at all the mediocre FBS stadiums out there. The new dome upgrades are well overdue to modernize an old building.

[scottietohottie]

I just want to know how long it took the editors who did the news story on this to find that clip of a Bison qb throwing a pass eh? Can't belive they didn't show a run up the middle. Can't imagine how many hours of film they had to go through.

[The_Sicatoka]

I just want to know how long it took the editors who did the news story on this to find that clip of a Bison qb throwing a pass eh? Can't belive they didn't show a run up the middle. Can't imagine how many hours of film they had to go through.

Keep that up and they'll take away your "Tyler Roehl Fan Club" membership card.

[TAILG8R]

This reminds me of the yelling and screaming(scream yellow!?!?) about ESPN not setting up in the tailgating lot.

I'm also perplexed by those that thinks this is being sold as an improvement for NDSU to the voters????

This will be sold to the voters as keeping up in the arms race for attracting events to Fargo

[gotts]

It should be a whale of an expansion!

[Professor Chaos]

Tell the "it's only used 10 days a year for football" argument to billionaire NFL owners who get massive taxpayer subsidies every time they want to build a new stadium.

[NDSUBowler]

Rob Sobolik was on with Izzo this morning to talk about this. I encourage all to listen. He mentioned wifi and stated that it costs about 800k-1 million and need to be renewed every 4-5 years and that it need to be looked at as if it fits into budgets. Didnt say it is off the table, just stating the tacts. Also mentioned that updating seats was likely; please God at minimum get rid of the red seats. New seats (which should be green in my opinion) would cost 4-5 million. If you are going to spend 140 million, might as spend 4 more as this would really make it feel like and upgrade. What people need to realize is that this is not only about making the experience of Bison football games better, which it will, but to make all events there better. Bison football is there at most 9 days a year. There are 356 other days that events happen there. A lot of talk about increasing seats ad well. One, last I checked, we aren’t selling out anymore and there are plenty of seats available. And secondly, a potential FBS move would not require additional seating requirements. The Fargodome is not in the business of making NDSU an FBS team, and whatever the home of the Bison football tram looks like has zero, yes zero impact on if an FBS conference invites NDSU. Look at all the mediocre FBS stadiums out there. The new dome upgrades are well overdue to modernize an old building.

If they are spending 800k-1m on wifi and it literally never works during a game (along with no cell service) then I think they need to reevaluate their spends.

[TAILG8R]

Tell the "it's only used 10 days a year for football" argument to billionaire NFL owners who get massive taxpayer subsidies every time they want to build a new stadium.

But those stadiums also draw major concerts and events ... Or do they only literally get used 9-10 days a year????