Will coronavirus disrupt Fresno State’s plans to renovate Bulldog Stadium?

The coronavirus pandemic is putting a financial squeeze on Fresno State and its athletics department.

Has it also closed the window to upgrade Bulldog Stadium?

Terry Tumey, the Bulldogs’ athletics director, looks for a bright side. Fresno State, he said, has made incremental improvements on the stadium and will try to move forward with a project that was started, stalled, stopped and refocused all in the past five years.

But the next phase in a renovation plan to make the venue more fan-friendly is on hold for the foreseeable future.

“I would say that we are definitely focused on the safety of our students and our community first and foremost,” Tumey said. “That is the priority at this time. To say (the stadium renovation) is not at the forefront, that would be accurate. That’s not where we are right now.”

New lights, turf

Fresno State before the 2019 season upgraded the lighting at Bulldog Stadium and installed a new turf field, projects that cost about $5 million total.

It improved ADA accessibility and last season it added an outdoor club in the South end zone. It was making slow progress with a plan put together by university President Joseph Castro after nixing in 2018 what would have been a transformative renovation.

That plan, put together by former athletics director Jim Bartko, included suites, a stadium club and a new press box on the west side of the stadium as well as cross aisles and four tunnels into the seating bowl to improve access into, around and out of the stadium.

“It’s like a house. At some point you have to do some improvements,” Bartko said in 2015 in announcing the renovation plan. “I hear a lot from our fans: We have no kitchens to cook food for concessions and the restrooms aren’t fully adequate for 40,000 people and the ramps going up are kind of steep, the stairs are getting old.

“At some point in time you have to put some money into capital improvements, and it’s time for us to do it.”

Setbacks to 2015 plan

That plan was set back several times – there was cracking in the seating bowl that had to be fixed, an irrigation line ruptured and flooded the south end zone. Fundraising for the project, which was estimated at as much as $80 million, never came close to a level needed to take a next step.

It was finally scrapped in 2018 by Castro, who then committed $45 million in university funds to upgrade the stadium in steps.

The next phase of renovations to be considered were new concessions stands and restroom facilities, and improved wireless internet capabilities.

A privately funded football operations building is probably not happening soon, either. That project, running parallel to university-funded stadium renovations, would create needed space in and around the student-athlete village for all 21 of the Bulldogs’ sports programs.

Fresno State before COVID-19 had been making progress in a quiet fundraising phase, but it also has lost three key figures in development in the past five months: James Sewell (associate director of development, major gifts) took a job at Nevada; Adam Brooks (associate athletics director for development) left for Cal; and Davey Walton (associate director of development, major gifts) took a job at UCLA.

When the university and athletics department will be able to turn its focus back to overdue renovations to Bulldog Stadium is to be determined.

Coronavirus-related challenges

But the coronavirus pandemic adds to its challenge.

Tumey already has alerted coaches of the Bulldogs’ 21 sports programs to be ready for budget cuts, with Mountain West Conference and NCAA distributions cut by as much as $1.3 million due to the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament.

Football ticket sales, which generated more than $5 million in 2019, according to financial documents Fresno State submitted to the NCAA, are likely to be off even if the season starts on time.

If the season is delayed, the athletic department could miss out on a $600,000 guarantee to play a September game at Colorado and a $1.3 million guarantee to play an October non-conference game at Texas A&M.