The firms that designed a premium-seat retrofit at Ohio Stadium almost 20 years ago are introducing new loge boxes to “The Shoe.”
HNTB and OSports, a division of Cleveland-based Osborn Engineering, have been selected to design $42 million in upgrades to Ohio State’s 94-year-old football facility, said Mike Penner, the school’s senior associate athletic director for internal operations.
The companies are designing 35 loge boxes and 12 new suites as an extension of a two-level structure on the stadium’s west side. The new premium seats are in addition to the 81 suites that have been in place since 2001.
Kansas City-based HNTB and OSports teamed on the initial four-year, $194 million renovation, which started in 1998. Now they’re back in Columbus doing more work after OSports completed a feasibility study supporting the current project.
It kicks off in 2017, and the new premium seat addition will take two years to finish, said Scott Conlon, director of projects for the school’s facilities design and construction group. Some maintenance projects such as waterproofing concourses will stretch into 2020.
Crews will remove about 2,000 regular seats to clear space for the loge boxes and suites. The total number of seats will remain around 105,000; Ohio State expanded the south side by 2,000 seats a few years ago in anticipation of losing the west-side portion, Conlon said.
The loge boxes provide Ohio State with a midprice premium product to offer donors and alums. They’re similar to HNTB’s design of four-seaters at Oregon State’s Reser Stadium and Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium, said Gerardo Prado, the firm’s sports group director and vice president.
Adding 12 suites will help meet the demand for more high-end hospitality at the stadium. Ohio State has a large waiting list for suites, Athletic Director Gene Smith told The Columbus Dispatch earlier this year after the school announced the renovations.
The project extends to remodeling suites and improving infrastructure, such as restoring the concrete surface on the upper deck concourse that was part of the original construction in 1922. For HNTB, it marks the first time the firm is resdesigning some of the same spaces at a college football stadium where it did original work.
Back in 1998, Ohio Stadium was among HNTB’s first college football projects. Its work there helped the firm win stadium renovations at Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue. “Ohio Stadium started us on the right track in the Big Ten,” said Prado, HNTB’s sports principal for the project.
Ohio State selected Barton Malow to build the new loges and suites.
