UAA-62 - Ben Hill Griffin Stadium Facility Upgrades
The Swamp will be getting about $400M in upgrades that are projected to be finished in August 2025. Athletic Director Scott Stricklin addressed some of the concerns about reduction in its 88,500-person capacity. The public project plan can be found here: https://facilities.ufl.edu/projects/current-projects/project/. Despite what most of us have been reading in social media, there was never a hard requirements to permanently reduce capacity, but there was an acknowledgement in the initial announcement that seating might be reduced at least temporarily for ADA compliance and shifting of seating, but the offerors would need to propose a plan to recapitalize and potentially expand seating, among other considerations. The winning architect contractors, Crawford Architects and Gensler, will have its staff in place by the end of January. The planned cost will be $400M.Crawford renovated Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii for $350M over 3 years. That project did reduce overall seating from 50k to 30k, but traded that space for entertainment district features. Crawford also has a long-term relationship with the Seattle Seahawks and has renovated Lumen Field multiple times since 2007 at a total cost of $480M. Gensler has experience renovating MLB and NFL stadiums and will be upgrading the Baltimore Ravens' M&T Bank Stadium from 2024-2026.
