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Mizzou may add cabanas as part of a premium makover

Missouri, working with The Colonnade Group, is targeting its stadium’s north end for cabanas.
Photo by: CLAYTON HOTZE / MIZZOU ATHLETICS
Don Muret
Missouri’s football stadium renovations could extend to installing temporary premium seats behind the north end zone, school officials say.

The Southeastern Conference institution plans to invest between $75 million and $90 million to upgrade Memorial Stadium’s south end zone with new premium seats and a new football operations building. At the north end, there’s an opportunity to fill plaza space with tented cabanas flanking the scoreboard, said Tim Hickman, an executive associate athletic director in charge of managing the overall construction project.

The temporary seating model is Mississippi State’s Scoreboard Club terrace cabanas at Davis Wade Stadium, Hickman confirmed. That school, in tandem with The Colonnade Group, the company that sells suites and club seats for MSU football games, built the eight cabanas on the patio deck in the upper level of the stadium’s north end zone. An eight-seat cabana comes with 12 passes for each home game and runs $18,000 for the season. The units sold out in two days.

The investment was $160,000, said Scott Stricklin, who was MSU’s athletic director before taking over at Florida on Nov. 1.

In Columbia, where The Colonnade Group has sold premium seats for Missouri football games, the two parties have discussed cabanas, but those talks occurred too close to the 2016 season to get anything done, Hickman said.

Cabanas could potentially pop up in 2017 before construction starts at the opposite end, but to this point, no decisions have been made, he said. As it stands, sometimes Missouri sets up a few tents for corporate sponsors in the north end, but it’s not done consistently.

The Colonnade Group’s setup, by comparison, with lounge chairs, tables, counter space and televisions, would sit for the entire season at Memorial Stadium.

Block Party Suites is working with Minnesota on plans for end zone units.
Photo by: BLOCK PARTY SUITES
“What MSU did was cool and innovative with not a whole lot of investment up front,” Hickman said. “Our north end is open and above a grass hill with the block M is the plaza. We have space to accommodate those cabanas as part of the renovation.”

For the south end, where the bulk of the upgrades are taking place, market research firm CSL International is conducting a study to determine the right mix of suites and club seats. CSL also is surveying football donors to determine the demand for field-level suites, Hickman said.

HOK’s Tom Waggoner is filling the role of master planner to define the project’s scope and budget. The process for selecting an architect could start early next year, Hickman said. The earliest construction could start is after next season.

In addition to Missouri, Appalachian State and Southern Miss are among other schools that have expressed interest in cabanas after seeing what was done at Mississippi State, said Robbie Robertson, The Colonnade Group’s president and CEO.

Elsewhere, Block Party Suites, a firm that converts shipping containers into temporary tailgating spaces, is working with the University of Minnesota to install its product inside TCF Bank Stadium as part of a new end zone club. As of last week, no deal had been signed, Block Party Suites CEO Adam Ward said. The vendor first tested the concept in-venue with ESPN at the 2015 Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl game.

Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.

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