Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Temple University has hired the team of AECOM and Moody Nolan to design a 30,000-seat football stadium on campus, architects working on the project have confirmed.
AECOM’s Steve Terrill and Brian Pounds, designers of FAU Stadium while they were employed with HKS, are two principals involved in the project in Philadelphia, which is similar in scope, though without the palm trees framing the facility, said Terrill, the project’s lead designer.
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Temple averaged more than 44,000 fans in 2015, helped by a sellout for the Penn State game.
Photo by: AP IMAGES
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Florida Atlantic University’s 30,000-seat stadium opened in Boca Raton in 2011 at a cost of $70 million. In north Philly, Temple’s budget is $130 million for facility construction, to be financed through private donations and a bond sale, according to a resolution the university approved in February.
The project has been in the works for a few years, and as of last week, Temple athletic department officials were not ready to discuss the selection of architects. But Temple Athletic Director Patrick Kraft, speaking generally about the idea of a campus stadium earlier this month, said, “My belief is that football on campus would be huge for us. Now that we have 15,000-plus students [living on or near campus], one of our issues is getting people to see what’s going on around our campus. Football would be a great opportunity to get 30,000-plus people here to see the evolution of what Temple is, six times a year.”
Temple, a member of the American Athletic Conference, now plays home games at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Philadelphia Eagles, a stadium with about 67,600 seats. For the 2015 season, Temple averaged a school record 44,000 per home game, buoyed by sellouts for Penn State and Notre Dame.
AECOM’s Steve Terrill and
Brian Pounds designed FAU Stadium while at HKS.
Temple officials are intimately familiar with FAU Stadium. Craig Angelos, Temple’s deputy director of athletics, served as Florida Atlantic’s athletic director from 2003 to 2012 and oversaw the school’s stadium project.
In addition, Temple played Toledo in the Marmot Boca Raton Bowl at FAU Stadium in December, and Temple officials toured the 5-year-old facility as part of their research for stadium development, Terrill said.
Moody Nolan, a Cincinnati firm, is designing Temple’s new indoor football practice facility next to the stadium site. Based on that project, AECOM decided to partner with the company to help win the job.
For the stadium itself, Moody Nolan’s Curt Moody is the principal-in-charge of the project and his co-worker Troy Sherrard is project design director.
“While Temple has been complimentary about [FAU Stadium] … I think that their satisfaction with the work that Moody Nolan was doing on the practice facility was also a major factor,” Terrill said.
Together, the two firms are designing a stadium, starting with a feasibility study, to fit within Temple’s urban campus, which features an eclectic mix of stone and brick buildings surrounded by older residential neighborhoods. The intent is to develop a stadium with up to 2,500 club seats distributed among two premium levels. There will be a few suites to meet the needs of corporate clients, but in general, based on the school’s market studies, a greater emphasis will be placed on larger hospitality spaces tied to premium seats in the bowl. That’s been the trend for AECOM’s recent college projects, Terrill said.
The stadium site’s eastern border is along Broad Street, among the city’s busiest thoroughfares, and the plan is to incorporate retail space as part of the sports development, Terrill said.
The stadium is targeted to open for the 2018 season.
Staff writer Terry Lefton contributed to this report.
