Memorial Stadium slated for $450M remake, new South Stadium

The University of Nebraska unveiled plans for a $450 million renovation of the iconic college football venue on Thursday, featuring a ground-up rebuild of South Stadium, the installation of chair-back seats in East and West stadiums, and improvements made with accessibility for all fans in mind.

The program statement, which will go before the Board of Regents next week, also calls for modernizing restrooms throughout the concourse, creating new spaces for academic programs, student life and community engagement at UNL, and improving the efficiency of operations at the facility.

If approved at the Oct. 5 meeting, the renovation would be the largest single facility project in terms of cost to ever be considered by NU’s governing board. The $323 million Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center currently holds that distinction.

Roughly half of the project cost — $225 million — will be paid for through private donations, while the remainder will come from an internal lending program used by NU to fund facility projects as well as other athletic department funds.

No state tax dollars, student tuition or other fees will be used to pay for the renovation, the university stressed.

Nebraska Athletics Director Trev Alberts said that once it’s finished, the renovation will embody a “holistic vision for the entire stadium” outlined by some 22,000-odd fans who provided feedback on their experience and laid the foundation for the department’s financial success in the years to come.

The 2022 survey resulted in “really, really good” input from Husker fans about how the university could improve their experience, Alberts told the Journal Star in an interview, with some fans going into excruciating detail about what they thought Memorial Stadium could do better.

Most of the feedback received revolved around improving fan comfort, as well as modernizing the stadium’s infrastructure and raising amenities at Memorial Stadium to a level seen at college venues across the country, or even above.

While that served as an internal driver for the proposed renovation, an external driver — the monumental shift in the business of college athletics, particularly how revenues once funneled into athletic departments are now being redistributed to student-athletes due to litigation as well as the emerging NIL industry — means universities need to look at ways to keep their finances in the black, Alberts said.

The case for keeping the business side of Husker Athletics profitable means it will be able to continue investing in emerging opportunities in college sports, particularly volleyball and women’s basketball, which are seeing increased popularity nationwide, he added.

“I don’t know what everybody else is doing, I don’t know where (collegiate athletics) is going,” Alberts said, “but what I do know is the best chance we have to navigate these choppy waters is to have the most disciplined business we can, have a healthy balance sheet and a strategy for the future.”

Part of that strategy will focus on ensuring Memorial Stadium is accessible to all fans by addressing Americans with Disabilities Act deficiencies that have existed, in some cases, for decades. Alberts said that after relying on being “grandfathered in in some areas,” it was time to address those issues.

Putting chair backs in three sides of the stadium and widening aisles, installing handrails and other related amenities will improve comfort, Alberts said, but NU also anticipates that could result in a 10-12% capacity reduction.

If Memorial Stadium can now seat 89,000-plus for a football game (ignoring the 92,003 figure Husker volleyball put up on Aug. 30), it might only take 78,000 to 79,000 Husker fans to reach sellout status in the future.

The lowest level of the new South Stadium behind the end zone will also become the new home for students — known as the Boneyard — as well as the Cornhusker Marching Band, which Alberts said was a focus of major donors who plan to back the project.

“We need to do a better job of embracing our students,” Alberts said. “We want the students and the band to say, ‘This is our home, this is where we gather.’ It will be the loudest, most crazy environment in the world.”

The new South Stadium will also have a new loading dock, vertical transportation for fans and athletics staff, as well as new concessions stands, restrooms and a concourse providing easy access to both East and West stadiums. Fans will be able to navigate 360 degrees of the stadium at ground level, and 270 degrees from an upper concourse, under the proposed renovation.

Throughout the stadium, concession upgrades will provide new menu options and added points of sale, while restrooms will also be modernized. Alberts said the goal is to provide amenities to fans and ease of use so they won’t feel like they’ll miss a significant portion of the game if they step out for a drink.

The plan to renovate Memorial Stadium will also include building infrastructure to serve alcoholic drinks to fans enjoying a game or other event. But Alberts is quick to note that any decision to sell booze would be up to the Board of Regents at a future date.

“While we’ve had lots of people demand or request it now, it just isn’t physically possible,” he said. “We don’t have the point of sale and Wi-Fi to handle it.”

Alberts said the renovation also gives Memorial Stadium a chance to be in use more than just seven Saturdays every fall.

With the opening of the “Go BIG” football facility project and the consolidation of services for student-athletes in that facility, UNL will look at how vacant space could be repurposed for student learning and community engagement.

Husker Athletics approached UNL Executive Vice Chancellor Kathy Ankerson about the opportunities of using areas of East Stadium for overflow space for academic programs that need it or experiential learning opportunities that aren’t feasible elsewhere.

Ankerson worked with UNL’s deans to identify programs that could fit and came back with a need of 60,000 square feet, Alberts said, about half of what will be available: “That can grow once it’s built out and people get excited and have more demand.”

All in all, Alberts said the stacking benefits — improved experiences for fans and students, new opportunities to engage in entrepreneurial partnerships that could diversify revenue streams, and a better engagement with campus — realized through investment in Memorial Stadium will keep Nebraska Athletics competitive well into the future.

“The outcome of this project is still the same,” Alberts said. “It’s seat comfort and everything we learned in the survey, but it quickly became a business strategy for the next 25 years. That’s really the way I look at it.”

But getting to that point could involve a little short-term pain, particularly for those who call South Stadium home on Husker gamedays, as well as others in the Sea of Red who will be affected by construction throughout the venue.

Alberts said — repeating the caveat that the plan first needs regents’ approval — that planning and preliminary work would begin almost immediately with the goal of tearing down South Stadium after the Huskers’ last home game of the 2024 season.

The athletic department is exploring options to make those fans “whole,” he said, but admitted that the project is going to be “really disruptive.”

“This is not going to be easy and there are going to be people that are really upset,” Alberts said. “But there is no other way for us to ensure the viability of a 100-year-old stadium.”

The program statement outlines a goal of July 2026 for construction to be completed and August 2026 — as the Huskers gear up for their fall campaign — as the date to occupy the new space.

Husker Athletics is hoping the as-yet-unnamed project will be done by that point, but Alberts said the unpredictability of Nebraska’s weather and other unforeseen delays could mean South Stadium won’t be occupied until the 2027 season at the earliest.

“We’re going to have to build around a football season, so I’d love for it to be one year, but we better plan on two,” Alberts said. “Every time we’ve done a project like this, we find something we didn’t anticipate, there’s always unknowns.

“I’m mentally preparing for two seasons to be without South Stadium,” he added.

Lincoln Regent Tim Clare, the current chair of the board, called the proposal put forward by Alberts and Husker Athletics an “exciting vision for Memorial Stadium’s next era that puts our fans first.”

“Whether we’re talking about getting back into the (Association of American Universities), or winning national championships, or recruiting the very best students, student-athletes and faculty — it all matters when it comes to achieving excellence at the University of Nebraska,” Clare said.

Regent Rob Schafer of Beatrice, who will be the board’s chairman in 2024, said the University of Nebraska has the opportunity to lead when it comes to fan experience at Husker football games and other events in the stadium.

“The plans put forward today by Trev Alberts will make Memorial Stadium one of the top destinations in college sports for generations of Husker fans to come,” Schafer said. “We have a lot of hard work ahead, but I know Nebraskans will once again come together to make this tremendous vision a reality.”

Regents will meet at 9 a.m. on Oct. 5 on the UNMC campus in Omaha to consider the program statement for the Memorial Stadium renovation and other business.