Senior associate athletic director Joe Parker joined Jeff DeFran and WTKA’s Big Show yesterday afternoon to discuss the stadium renovation. He fielded a few good questions from the audience, yielding a few notes:
- They will start to disassemble the press box the Monday after the Ohio State game and expect it to be gone within 60 days.
- They will remove the cab out of the elevator and use the shaft to drop the debris, allowing them to effectively dismantle that beauty from the inside out.
- U-M is going to keep the art deco Michigan Stadium signs, but not sure what to do with them yet.
- The two structures, stacked upright and on top of each other is the equivalent of a 66-story building.
- Parker also noted that they did not use the original footings that Fielding Yost put in the structure back in the day as they just didn’t work for the renovation design.
- A lot of people are asking about the end zones which look a little bit out of place right now, beside the gigantic brick structures. A caller talked about the importance of keeping the capacity high and Parker dropped some knowledge:
“With the project we always left the ability to enclose either endzone or both. We did the design work so that the floor plates would match up and you could actually circulate around the building at higher levels than the ground level concourse.”
My take on this: they should consider adding in an open concourse in the end zone like they’ve done at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium where folks can pay a reduced fee to watch games general admission. As an aside, for whatever reason I’m not as worked up as everyone else about keeping up the stadium capacity but I’ll play along.
The podcasts of Joe’s segments are available on WTKA here and here.
One thing Joe mentioned on WTKA and I meant to mention coming out of the tour of the stadium renovation last week is this website: michiganstadiumproject.com and one feature in particular, the ability to see the available club level and chairback seats by section:
To get to this view you need a few clicks, explained on the website:
Familiarize yourself with this Michigan Stadium Project web site to view information on the premium seats and to familiarize yourself with its navigation. The Premium Seating tab, with its drop down menu, contains the seating manifests as well as views to the field from each section.
To view the specific seats, click on a section represented in a color-coded zone location. You will see a schematic of the section noting rows, seats, aisles and other features. This page will also show which seats are available and already reserved during an earlier appointment.
Related:
- eBay Watch: Big House Dedication (1927)
- eBay Watch: Michigan’s Grand Old Man Laid to Rest (1946)
- Michigan Stadium Renovation Tour – Photos
