Raising the Bar for Athletic Facilities

Some of the toughest competition in sports today is happening in the area of athletic facilities. Teams at all levels are competing against streaming services for fans’ time and attention; they are competing for the best athletes and the most talented coaches. And they are demanding state-of-the-art facilities to pull it off. What’s happening at the highest tier of professional sports arenas, locker rooms, and training facilities is not being lost on college and university planners, where the stakes may be even higher. At play in collegiate athletic facilities are mandates to boost the school’s brand, attract students, increase donor support, and develop new sources of revenue. 

The emphasis is on providing a higher-quality experience for everyone involved, from more comfortable seating and better food for the fans, to more spacious locker rooms and social spaces for the athletes, and offices for the coaches.

“We’ve seen this change in athletics, both at the collegiate and at the professional level,” says Peter Broeder, AIA, principal at HOK in Kansas City, Mo. “In a lot of ways, the two are more similar than they’ve ever been.”

“So much of it is about student recruitment and enrollment and attracting prospective students,” says Greg Sage, associate athletic director for broadcast and media relations at Belmont University in Nashville. “Facilities matter.”

Enrollment at many colleges and universities is dropping, as the population of college-age students shrinks, so competition for those students gets fiercer every year. Schools benefit from a powerful brand, which in turn benefits from a healthy athletic program. And even as higher ed enrollments drop, participation in athletics is on the rise.

“In the 1980s, the average Division III school had maybe 300 students playing varsity sports,” says Nick Vaughn, senior principal and director of the Education and Athletic Practice at SMRT in Portland, Maine. “Now, the average is 463, while the student enrollment is shrinking, which means a greater percentage are participating in varsity sports.”

As colleges and universities are taking their cues from professional arenas, some high school facilities—most notably the regional high school arenas in Texas—are being designed to collegiate standards, with dedicated elevators for the home and visiting teams, two-story press boxes, dedicated warm-up spaces and toilet facilities for the band and cheerleaders, and suites that they auction off for private use. 

“We actually have Division II colleges play at McKinney ISD (Independent School District) Stadium (in McKinney, Texas) because it seats 12,000 and it looks like a collegiate stadium,” says Scott Klaus, AIA, LEED AP, principal at Stantec in Houston.

“It seems like every district is just continuing to raise the bar,” says Klaus.

“The glitz and glam of these sporting facilities are teaching schools with resources that improvement is really important to their total branding and story,” says John Roberson, CEO of Advent.

The quality of the athletic facilities reflects on the entire institution, not just the athletes. Heritage Hall, the athletic Hall of Fame for the University of Southern California (designed by Advent), for example, is featured on the undergraduate campus tour to highlight the community experience of attending athletic events, explains Roberson.

“This is the most visual generation that’s ever come through the doors of college campuses,” he adds. “How the facilities look and whether or not students feel like they can take pictures of it, if they can post about it on Instagram and feel proud about where they’re going to school—that heavily sways their decision-making when they’re picking their colleges or universities.”

Enhancing the Game Day Experience

The new planning concepts for athletic facilities can help ensure that the fans have a good time regardless of how well their team plays.

“We’re obsessed with the fan experience,” says Jeffrey Brown, president of the Greenville Drive, a High-A Minor League affiliate of the Boston Red Sox based in Greenville, S.C. “We want everything we do to add value to what people experience when they come through the ballpark, making sure it augments that experience in a fun, impactful way.”

A transformative push to improve minor league baseball venues came in 2020, when, after a century of operating independently, minor league baseball was taken over by the majors, explains Brown.

“Part of the reason that happened was there was such an inconsistency of facility standards across the league,” he says. “Now there’s a very specific rubric of facility standards that each club needs to adhere to, in terms of quality, locker room space, meeting space, technology. There were a handful of things that you just wouldn’t have anticipated 20 years ago—female locker room space, female coaching space, data rooms, additional meeting room space.”

In fact, the rapid expansion of women’s athletics is resulting in not only enhancements of existing facilities to make them more flexible, but in the construction of entire facilities dedicated to female athletes. 

Better Seating for Everyone

In the past, fans had two choices: general admission, with the ubiquitous hard plastic seats or bleachers, and more luxurious box seats. And nothing much in between. “Creating an enhanced experience for every spectator is something that a lot of clients, a lot of franchises, are very interested in right now,” says Broeder of HOK.

That includes a greater variety of price points and experiences, and all of them are more comfortable. General admission seats are being replaced by mesh seats that are less rigid and more comfortable, particularly in warmer climates, where passive ventilation and shade are also a priority.

Premium seating is no longer found exclusively in the glassed-in boxes that hang over the stadium. In fact, the most expensive seats often can be found in the heart of the arena.

When HOK redesigned State Farm Arena for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team in 2018, they eliminated many of the traditional box seats and replaced them with them with “flexible suites.”

“That really blew up the model of the traditional suite product as being that highest end premium product,” says Broeder. “Increasingly, a lot of folks, specifically the younger demographic, are seeking more of a social atmosphere, even at that highest end of premium experience.” 

Broeder and his team at HOK are designing a new football stadium for the Jacksonville Jaguars that includes loge seating, with furniture you might find in your living room and amenities like touch-screen displays and counter space for dining. These are some of the most expensive seats, even though they are incorporated in the stands—separated by an aisle, for example—so fans who have paid the highest prices still share the excitement with thousands of other fans.

Higher quality seating sometimes means fewer seats overall. When the home of the Tennessee Titans football team, the $2.1 billion Nissan Stadium, opens in 2027—designed by TVS as the architect of record and MANICA as the lead design architect—it will contain 9,000 fewer general admission seats than the previous stadium, to make way for more premium seating.

Some colleges and universities are following suit. A 2022 renovation of Camp Randall Stadium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reduced the seating capacity by more than 3,000 to create premium seating in the stands rather than in glassed-in suites. 

“It seems counterintuitive on the front end to sacrifice ticket revenue with fewer seats,” says Sage, of Belmont University. “Some are saying it’s worth the investment to reduce total capacity, because you’ll be able to preserve or even amplify your hardest-core base fans.”

Dining Experience

Nobody in the 1980s went to a ball game for the food. But fans now expect more than a hotdog and a beer. They want a daylong outing that includes a restaurant-quality meal and a full bar for their family or colleagues. 

“That successful local businesswoman—maybe she runs a law firm—wants to bring in her partners or her clients to that game,” says Roberson of Advent. “This is critical: She’s doing it for a business purpose. She’s doing it to wine and dine them. So now you see how the product on the court is suddenly changing in the way that we consume it.”

When HOK designed the 2019 renovation of Footprint Center—home of the Phoenix Suns men’s basketball team and the women’s team, the Phoenix Mercury—a practice court in the basement was moved off site to make room for “a really chic club environment, kind of a speakeasy environment,” as Broeder describes it. And the entrance lobby was transformed with a full-service bar and a high level of technology integration.

Massive professional arenas are not the only ones stepping up their food game. Fluor Field, home of the Greenville Drive, contains two 3,000-sf kitchens—one that services an outdoor sports bar area and the concession stands, and one where an executive chef is dedicated to the premium seats.

“I would argue that probably 30, 40, 50% of a person’s experience here at the ballpark is dictated by food, so you need somebody who’s an expert in that space,” says Brown, president of the organization. “We don’t outsource any of our food and beverage.”

Back-of-the-House 

Not all of the transformation occurring in athletic facilities is visible to the fans. Changes are also occurring in the size, design, and number of locker rooms and offices, particularly for collegiate athletics, and social spaces are becoming an integral part of the floorplan.

The University of Texas built common spaces to bring together athletes from the 28 sports on campus, whose schedules are so packed that they have little time for socializing, says Roberson. “There’s incredible community in that athletic population,” he says. Without it, “they’re missing the college experience.”

Students are also asking for more privacy in locker rooms, so rows of urinals and open showers are becoming a thing of the past, says Vaughn of SMRT. Coaches also want more privacy to have sensitive conversations with students, so they are asking for more private offices.

“Kids are showering in their dorms now,” he says, “so we’re right-sizing the locker rooms and designing the building around the student experience. At Thomas College (a Division III school in Waterville, Maine), the locker rooms are large, with four individual shower stalls with curtains and radiant floor heat.”

Designed by SMRT, the 16,590-sf Sukeforth Family Sports Center at Thomas College features four locker rooms, a weight room, a new athletic training facility, a tunnel leading to turf fields, an eSports cave, athletic department offices, and a 15-person classroom.

More attention is also being paid to training facilities.

“Training facility design has been an expanding frontier,” says HOK’s Broeder. “Creating training facilities that are truly state of the art, customized to the athletes’ needs, and embracing ideas of hospitality, even within the athlete-facing spaces, was not typically done in the past.”

“At Thomas College, there are three trainer offices in the training room,” adds Vaughn. “Schools are pointing that out to prospective students and coaches. Previously, they might have all shared one trainer office. It’s a small thing, but it’s a differentiator.”

The Crockett Center for Athletic Excellence, an indoor practice facility that opened three years ago at Belmont University (an NCAA Division I school), was designed to such a high standard by Earl Swensson Associates, Inc., of Nashville, that the NBA teams the Chicago Bulls and New Orleans Pelicans have used it for practice and training camps.

And Plymouth State University in New Hampshire converted its field house into a 17,500-sf training facility in 2022. Designed by SMRT, it is the largest strength and conditioning facility for an NCAA Division III school.

Awaking the Sleeping Giant—That Arena is not Just for Game Day Anymore

These enhancements are not designed just for the athletes and their fans, because these facilities are not just for sporting events. That is part of the reasoning behind large lobbies with floor-to-ceiling glazing, full-service bars, and lounges that look and feel like your local steak house.

“A lot of attention is being paid right now to the programming of the perimeters of the venue, part of making these venues not just multi-purpose but accessible on non-event days,” says Broeder. “Creating venues that are outward facing is a real driver these days, whether a new build or renovation. That includes program spaces along the exterior that are commercially focused and can be active 365 days a year. A lot of cities are very interested in making these sleeping giants more friendly neighbors.”

Large sports arenas have doubled as concert venues for years, but the complexity has increased exponentially. 

“It’s not uncommon that you would need to be able to move 60 or 70 semis in and out of these buildings in preparations for, and then following, a major concert tour,” explains Broeder. “The degree of technology and the degree of equipment that travels with these tours these days has continued to increase. And these venues are competing against one another to host these tours.”

On a smaller scale, Fluor Field in Greenville, S.C., hosts just 66 home games a year for the Greenville Drive, in a stadium built to replicate Boston’s Fenway Park. They fill the schedule by adding 30 amateur baseball games—both collegiate and high school—and about 150 community events, from concerts to board meetings to weddings. 

“Six or seven years ago, we added three or four different event spaces, because it was pretty clear that this was a year-round events platform,” says Brown. The renovations and additions—designed by the architectural firms DLR Group; Goodwyn Mills Cawood; and McMillan Pazden Smith—included a 4,000-sf event space that can accommodate 200 people, and a 3,000-sf “front porch” that is used as a lounge for season ticket holders. 

Colleges and universities, which are increasingly looking for ways to get the most and best use out of all of their buildings, are incorporating spaces for related fields of study, such as physical therapy and sports medicine, into their athletic facilities. The iconic football stadium at Notre Dame University, for example, was historically used only eight days a year—for home games and commencement—before a $400 million renovation/expansion in 2017. (The S/L/A/M Collaborative was the executive architect on the project, working in collaboration with RATIO and design/build contractor Barton Malow. HOK was the sports architect.)

Even high school facilities are opening up for outside events. Large regional stadiums in Texas, for example, often have community rooms that can seat from 300 to 500 people. 

“Those rooms are used up to 300 times a year for different events, for either the district or to rent out to the community,” says Klaus of Stantec.

Alternative Funding Streams

Colleges and universities, looking for ways to fund the sizeable investment these state-of-the-art facilities require, are more often forming partnerships with private developers. The result can be a mixed-use district that benefits the sport, the institution, and the community.

“By partnering with private developers to finance these projects, athletic administrators mitigate risk while finding new revenue streams without raising ticket prices or relying on tapped-out donors,” writes Trevor Bechtold, director of HOK’s Sports + Recreation + Entertainment Practice.

The University of Nevada Reno is in the process of drafting an agreement with the privately owned Grand Sierra Resort to construct a $350 million sports arena as part of a billion-dollar development two miles from campus. The new arena, currently in design by Gensler, is scheduled to break ground in 2025 with completion in 2027.

“We approached the university and asked if they would be interested in being our flagship tenant, for lack of a better word,” says Christopher Abraham, chief marketing officer for Grand Sierra Resort. “We would build the specs around basketball first, around the needs of the university.”

There are about a dozen or so examples of this kind of partnership—Moody Center with the University of Texas being perhaps the biggest, says Abraham. “We’re starting to see it more and more over the last 10 years.”

Every investment in an athletic facility raises the visibility of the institution beyond its sports program and enhances its brand, making it more attractive to prospective students. 

“Each time we do a project, the high-water mark is increasing,” adds Vaughn. “Facilities are important for the recruitment and retention of students, but also for coaches, who then recruit students.”

By Lisa Wesel