How you would prioritize WSU's next moves in the facilities arm race?

[Coug95man2]

I don't disagree at all with your premise here. That said, I looked at Gonzaga's kennel seating. See article below, which is still accurate in terms of the 1,200 student seats (only 20% of capacity). Note in the article it says the student seating wraps around 3 sides of the kennel (including both end lines). In terms of quantity, it appears that students still have at least 1/3 of Martin Stadium. Of you were to take Section 27 away and replace it with the lower sideline and endzone seats, you would pretty much replicate the kennel example but with far more student seats, percentage wise.

https://www.gonzagabulletin.com/article_af361c1d-2975-549e-84ee-d13aa8d1ecdd.html

http://wsucougars.com/sports/2013/4/18/208262489.aspx (Martin Stadium)

At Beasley, the current seating charts don't even show the upper deck as available. But the students, who used to have about half of the seats, still must have at least a third of them, including the full baseline on their side. So Gonzaga has nothing on us, quality or quantity-wise.

An interesting aside on the Gonzaga article - they have a whopping 60 seat capacity in their kennel luxury boxes, but also have a club room with bar(s) for well-healed folk. This is something that could be done at Beasley pretty easily (well with the help of a couple of jackhammers). You could block off a couple-3 sections of the inside concourse, knock out the back wall and establish some box seats and a club room of sorts. MIght be worth the investment once we get a team that people actually want to come see.

Percentage wise, I haven't a clue. I do know that, for basic analogy, Gonzaga students have end zone to end zone seats. But Gonzaga students do not have each "end zone" per say. In the link below, Students have sections 103-107, lower.
http://www.spokesman.com/sports/team/gonzaga-basketball/seating-chart/
And by no means do I think they should have an entire lower level, "end zone to end zone" for WSU football. I was advocating for not moving them. Keep our students engaged, keep our students loud and a big part of the atmosphere. That is all.

Regarding small improvements, the whole luxury seats expansion has alcohol already. Because it's a closed area, they have control of alcohol coming and going... or actually the premise being not going. The beer garden premise is what they were attempting to start up, a couple years ago. It's just a non-starter. The WSLCB just isn't going to budge. Here is the link for licensing if you want to wade into it further. I've dabbled into this... it's a quagmire, to say the least.
https://lcb.wa.gov/licensing/apply-liquor-license

Doesn't include the TTB, but I don't think they give a rip, as long as they get their share.

Oregon State has "The Terrace" but not only is it a closed off area, but it's a "membership" only with a controlled people flow. Oregon has it's own liquor board, we have ours. Our's doesn't like the idea of breaking new ground, apparently. To be clear, it's odd to me the site still has drawings up, instead of real pictures... so I'm assuming this is up and running... ? Haven't been to Reser in decades.
THE TERRACE

 

[Coug95man2]

Hear, hear

Add the luxury boxes to generate more $$$.

Expand Martin Stadium to make more $$$.

Sell beer at the concession stands and count that $$$.

But will any perceived benefit outweigh the costs if the WSU student section is demoted to the end zone?

I think one thing to recognize with expansion... it will REQUIRE more than just seats. By law, you'll have to have parking for those people (remember we've taken away quite a bit of parking since we had a 40k seating stadium). You'll have to have elevators for the disabled to said seats, bathrooms to accommodate more people. The legal requirements for 10k+ people will be big. The infrastructure, the general footprint, will have to expand, as well. Hate to go back to it, but this is a major reason Gonzaga's arena is so small. They had to deal with an expanded footprint, parking, etc. etc. so they kept it smaller.

So as a comparison, it will span the field the same as the South side (east to west). It'll have luxury seats and boxes, like the South Side. If we are this far into it, potentially more general seats... So people are advocating 50-80 million dollars (I'm guessing low end being 50 but 80 mill is what the South side cost)? The South Side needs to get payed off before we place that kind of debt onto the pile we already have, IMHO.

I'll add, when Martin Stadium expands to 40K or more... EXPECT Stadium Way to be permanently shut down and it be a pedestrian mall. Part of that plan I'd mentioned in a another thread was to build roads, parking, etc for such expansion and the ability to deal with that influx of people. You bring in 10K more people into little 'ol Pullman, and that road will be a nightmare, aside from the pedestrian/car collisions they'll want to mitigate. Not a thing of, "I like it so I'm going to blindly push it". It's just the way WSU works. As more people come, they close down roads. Name a portion of that school that you walk on, that wasn't a road at some point.