MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University Board of Governors on Friday approved a $106-million master plan to upgrade athletics facilities, including a new 150-seat football meeting room.
Narvel Weese, WVU’s vice president for administration and finance, said the projects include $75 million in bonds. Another $25 million will come from Mountaineer Athletic Club fundraising and $6 million from the third-tier media-rights deal with IMG, the school said.
Weese said the bonds project be paid off with an increase in department revenue.
“Those capital improvements are coming from conference revenues, media rights revenue, additional revenues within athletics,” Weese said. “It’s not creating any financial burden with any other part of the university.”
The current football team meeting room—which Holgorsen infamously described as the worst in college football last year—is smallish, dated and marred by poor sight lines. Holgorsen claims it’s barely functional, much less on par with the lavish theater-style rooms other programs have unveiled in recent years.
The new design calls for a 4,500-square foot room with tiered seating. It will be constructed in concert with a new players’ entrance and lobby area at the Milan Puskar Center.
The master plan also seeks flexibility to fund projects that haven’t been designed—such as a WVU Coliseum renovation that would update restrooms, concourses and concession areas, and possibly add suites.
Other campus projects include repurposing Hawley Field, renovating the WVU Natatorium, constructing an indoor track at the Shell Building, and updating the varsity tennis courts.
“It identifies where the car is on the track, so we don’t have collisions,” he said.
The university will increase the PRT fee for students by $10 a semester to pay for the improvements.
The BOG also learned more Friday about five public-private partnership projects on the Morgantown campuses that Weese said would generate nearly $2 million in annual tax revenues annually for up to 40 years.