I get the impression this stuff will benefit the rich types in boxes while diminishing things for the working class Gator fans who actually wanna create noise/act like home SEC fans. Yeah I don't care about a few more bathrooms.
A&M did a massive renovation and raised theirs from 83000 to 102,000, lets copy them and not the idiot noles.
I love the Swamp, but imnsho it is outdated and needs more than a bandaid. How we accomplish that is the key. I am waiting to see the architectural renderings to see how that is actually accomplished.
So true that it is a shame that we would move to reduced capacity when we are consistently selling out the stadium that. That dilutes our homefield advantage. But, I can tell you from being in that stadium for almost every home game for the last twenty years that the renovations are needed. The passageways are jammed with poorly configured vendor lines, the bathrooms don't handle a sellout crowd, the sardine seating is really uncomfortable for anyone over 5'6"or 150 pounds, the gate entryways are uncovered in the rain and heat making them ineffective and inefficient in terms of moving people in, and more seatbacks would be a nice addition to keep people from fighting over their seat width real estate. So, in my opinion, renovations are needed but we need to find a way to not reduce total seat numbers at the same time. Why not add more height to the stadium, or maybe even fill in some of the northwest corner with new seats? That would bring the best of both worlds. As far as Stricklin, I'm not really a fan either.
I welcome all the renovations, just not the massive seating deletions. If they reduce seating by less than 5 thousand than I do not think it will hurt the loudness that much, but getting down to 72K would be a massive mistake, and it would most definitely affect the home field advantage/loudness. The Swamp would NOT BE THE SAME. As is stands now... I don't trust SS. Either way... I will go back soon to see the upgrades to all the other dated stuff at BHGS. It's time for me to go see some games in person again.
Better bathrooms and concessions require no loss of seating. Making any part of the stadium "more comfortable" will trigger bringing egress and ingress up to code requiring the loss of thousands of the most primo seats in the stadium, which will trigger large increases in the price of attendance. If that's the price to make a few oldsters like me a bit more comfortable for 24 hours (6 games x 4 hours/game) per year, then I say forget about it. Its not like its ever gonna be domed and air-conditioned...it will still be uncomfortable for at least half the games every year.
We are lucky that the way BHG was designed in 1930 put the stands virtually right on top of the playing field and the steepness of the final 60 or so rows keeps that sound generated in the stadium. I recall going to Falcons game back when they played games at the launching pad eons ago. 50 yd line seats were about a mile from the sideline. T A&M was one of those stadiums that originally had a track around the field. The stands were a long ways from the field. The were smart enough when they did the rebuild to move those stands way closer to the field. Some upper decks got them to the # of seats they are at now.
They've already shown the various options. Every one of them loses thousands of seats and the creates extremely wide horizontal rows at about 1/3 and 2/3 of the stadium height. The most egregious one chops almost 10K seats, most of them from the most desirable seats in the stadium.
