Work on expansion of City Park Stadium is continuing and Gainesville school officials provided updates on the project.
Director of Maintenance and Operations David Presnell said they hope to have the upgraded stadium complete by August, before Gainesville football's first home game on Sept. 20.
“So with the steel, we are probably about 30 to 35% complete. As far as the project, we're probably about the same,” Presnell said.
The roughly $13 million upgrades to the stadium will also bring more seating.
“I think (capacity) will be up over 5000 And that's where we needed to be. We want to make sure that's part of our planning for this is to make sure we were over the GHSA’s minimum seating capacity to host a semifinal game,” Gainesville Athletic Director Adam Lindsey said.
Lindsey said with the growth of the football program they knew it was time to upgrade their facilities.
“We knew that, the stadium had served its purpose for a very long time. And it was time for us to do some upgrades. And we knew we needed to make sure we covered a couple of things and the seating was certainly a part of it,” Lindsey said. “Having the expanded space for coaches and visitors and cameras and gameday operations and media booths. As football is getting better we're getting more and more media requests. And we were getting to a place where we couldn't just host all the people that wanted to come. We wanted to make sure we had enough room that if anybody wanted to come we had a spot for them.”
The new press box will feature more space than the previous one.
“This one is going to be a lot bigger than the other one. It was just a much-needed project. It was actually something that we needed to do earlier and the timing wasnt right,” Presnell said. “The other facility was nice when it was built, the press box, but it was certainly outdated. And we had outgrown it too frankly.”
The new press box will be nearly 12,000 square feet.
“I bet our other one was less than 2,000 square feet at most, yeah, so this is a lot bigger. A lot bigger,” Presnell said.
Presnell discussed the upgraded features of the facility.
“One big advantage besides the suites and the space in this one compared to what we had before. The restrooms and the concession facility on the bottom are a huge upgrade,” Presnell said.
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