The master plan for Auburn's athletic facilities includes something frequently discussed among fans of Auburn football: stadium expansion.
In October, Auburn hired a company that has created master plans for stadiums to integrate potential upgrades and renovations to Jordan-Hare Stadium with an anticipated future expansion.
"We hired this company to look at our stadium, figure out what it is we want to do," said athletic director Jay Jacobs, "adding seats, adding different amenities, all these different things.
"Since October, we've probably seen no fewer than six and maybe as many as a dozen different stadiums. We're pulling together what we think the stadium should look like in x number of years, all those components."
Creating a master plan with stadium expansion in mind avoids missteps while upgrading or renovating.
"You look at our stadium, and you think 'All right, we need more space for the recruiting lounge to recruit student-athletes for Olympic sports and for football,'" Jacobs said, in an example of what the plan aims to avoid. "That's going to cost you $500,000, so you go over there and you do that.
"The next year, you realize that you need more space for club-level seating, so you go to do that in the end zone right above the recruiting lounge, and you realize that you've put the recruiting lounge right in the way of where the pylons would go for the upper deck. So you work around that instead of having to come back and tear something out."
Jacobs said one key factor in determining when to move forward with stadium expansion is whether Auburn's pro forma will handle the debt service.
A pro forma is a financial statement designed to reflect a proposed change,
"Going into the '08 season, we started gearing up to look at a possible expansion, and then the economy crashed, we only won five ball games and everything got put on hold," Jacobs said. "We were selling out all of our Tiger's Unlimited Priority, selling out tickets, and we had done that two years in a row, which to us is the time that you need to look at expansion."
Jacobs said having two straight years where demand for tickets exceeds supply is a good indicator of when to move forward with expansion. He added that the economy improving and winning football games would help.
"That's what we hope to get back to," Jacobs said. "We definitely will have it ready to go when it's time to go. It won't be 'when it's time to go, let's get ready.' It'll be 'when it's time to go, we're ready to go.' So that's what we're taking this time now to do for football."
The speaker system in Jordan-Hare Stadium is an issue Jacobs said the master plan needs to address. He said it will cost about $5 million to replace.
"We didn't realize how bad it was, and then we hired a company to come in here, and it's not good," Jacobs said. "It is an issue, and that's one that we're going to have to address. It's just when they told us that in March, we weren't prepared for a $5 million investment in the speaker system."
Jacobs said now that the athletic department knows about the poor condition of the speaker system, updating it will be part of the business plan.
"We're going to do some things for this fall to try to help it some," Jacobs said. "You know, we have five goals here in the athletics department, and one of them is the gameday experience. We have to update our speaker system in the football stadium.
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