ASU: Expansion costs $25 million

ASU rendering
ASU rendering

Terry Mohajir’s car was pointed east toward Blytheville earlier this week, on his way to performing a duty that is second nature to him but fairly new to the Arkansas State athletic department.

Mohajir, with help from his staff, is “scouring the state” in search of money that will help fund a planned $25 million upgrade to Liberty Bank Stadium, improvements that will include a football operations center and an indoor practice facility to be built just beyond the north end zone.

Mohajir, who has yet to hit the one-year anniversary as ASU’s athletic director, said the Red Wolves are “getting closer and closer to our goal each day.”

Mohajir said he knew what he was getting into when he was hired as ASU’s AD last September.

Plans for the expansion had already been drawn and announced last Sept. 6, two weeks before he was introduced as Dean Lee’s successor. But changes have been made to the project since the day Chancellor Tim Hudson and then-football coach Gus Malzahn announced plans to replace the decade-old operations center on the stadiums’ south side and give ASU an indoor facility for the first time.

The alterations have added about $3 million and a few extra months to the project timeline, but Mohajir, a key fundraiser at Missouri-Kansas City, Florida Atlantic and Kansas, said massaging the project was essential.

“If you’re building something that’s $25 million, you don’t want to lose any revenue generating areas with that facility,” Mohajir said. “You have to build for the future of your program - the entire athletics program, not just the football program.”

The original plans, designed by Jonesboro-based Brackett Krennerich Architects, called for a 56,000-square-foot operations center and a 76,000 square-foot indoor facility. They are still the cornerstones to the project, but the addition of 600 club seats and 240 loge box seats have been added.

Mohajir said seating needed to be put back into Liberty Bank Stadium, currently at 30,406, especially since 3,300 bleacher seats are being taken out for the operations center.

The club seats and loge box seats will be available based on donation level for the facility and the athletic department.

“How you use your facilities to generate revenue is the most strategic element in your plans,” Mohajir said.

Mohajir knows what it’s like to raise funds for a major project. He was senior associate athletic director at Florida Atlantic during the construction of a $70 million football stadium, which opened in 2011 with 29,000 seats.

ASU, which will be seeking funding approval from the state legislature in August, needs to identify a spot where it can move its soccer field, which is where the indoor facility will reside.

Construction on the indoor facility will begin first, then the operations center and when that’s over, Mohajir said ASU will move on to other parts of a “master plan” that includes improvements to Tomlinson Stadium and an indoor practice facility for basketball.

“Perception, when you recruit, is very important,” Mohajir said. “Extremely important - the perception of growth. The facility, this facility is going to be as nice as any place in the country. It’ll be as good as any SEC, any Big 12, any of them. So, yeah, the perception will be very positive.”

Sports, Pages 28 on 06/09/2013

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