The University of Louisville says it is studying the possibility of building 30 suites and an undetermined number of club seats on the east side of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.
The project is in the early stages, said Kenny Klein, the school’s associate athletic director for media relations, and university officials haven’t selected an architect. Rosser International and local architect Luckett & Farley designed the stadium, which contains 42,000 chairback seats and has 29 suites and 1,800 club seats on the building’s west side.
The Louisville football team has developed into a national power in recent years and moved to the Big East Conference for the 2005 season.
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| Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, which opened in 1998, seats more than 40,000 and has 29 suites. |
The Cardinals sold out their first three home games this season, Klein said, and 27 suites have been leased at $25,000 a season for two years. The other two suites are reserved for the athletic director and school president.
Louisville has spent roughly $200 million, most of it private donations, to build new facilities for baseball, softball, soccer, swimming and track and field since the football stadium opened in September 1998, Klein said. The source of money for the football expansion hasn’t been determined.
The school’s basketball teams will be the primary tenants in a new publicly owned arena proposed for downtown.
RAISING THE ROOF: The 9,200-square-foot “Rock the Rooftop” in Charlotte Bobcats Arena’s upper deck will “create the first building anywhere where people sitting below will want to go higher in the facility,” predicted Barry Silberman, the venue’s chief operating officer.
The sponsor-driven space, on the east end of the arena, includes the Bud Light Billboard Bar, the 35-foot-high Coca-Cola water tower containing an elevated, rotating stage for live entertainment, and the Sprite Rufus Room, a children’s play area named for the Bobcats’ mascot.
Those amenities should pack enough bells and whistles for non-premium ticket holders to enjoy and provide enough curiosity for suite and club seat patrons to venture beyond their exclusive environments, Silberman said.
If they need more reasons, High Fries, one of two Rock the Rooftop food stands operated by arena concessionaire Levy Restaurants, will offer fried pickles and three-cheese macaroni. It’s the only place in the arena those delicacies will be sold.
LOWERING THE ROOF: The Chicago White Sox theoretically could have generated a minimum of $1.25 million in additional ticket revenue from playing two home games in the 2005 American League division and championship series if the team hadn’t eliminated 6,600 upper-deck seats at U.S. Cellular Field before the 2004 season.
Upper-deck reserved tickets cost $30 for the division series and $65 for the ALCS in the vicinity where eight rows of seats were torn down. The seats at the top of the ballpark sat empty for most games because fans perceived the upper deck to be too steep and too far from the field, according to team officials. The White Sox installed a canopy to make the ballpark appear more intimate.
Don’t cry for the Sox, though: They bumped up ticket revenue in 2005, introducing 314 premium seats behind home plate priced at $200 and $170 a game.
Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
