Every end is a new beginning, and this Saturday will prove no different for Wallace Wade Stadium.
Immediately following the Blue Devils' regular-season ending tilt against Wake Forest, Duke will bring school officials and construction equipment onto the field to ceremoniously mark the beginning of the Wallace Wade renovation process. The 85-year old venue is scheduled to undergo a two-year facelift project that will cost approximately $100 million.
"It's really exciting," vice president and director of athletics Kevin White said. "We will have bulldozers in the end zone here at the end of the Wake game and have a ceremonial move-the-ground-around moment. It'll be great."
The official work will start Monday, as the construction company Duke is partnering with for the project, Beck, will begin the extensive remodeling plan. This will begin with the lowering of the field and will include the removal of the track, lowering of the stands, installation of a new scoreboard in the south end zone and replacement of the Finch-Yeager Building—which serves as the Sports Medicine center and press box—with a new, state-of-the-art facility.
The field will be complete by the time the 2015 season kicks off, White said. The track will be fully removed and the new seats will have replaced it in order to grant fans a closer game experience.
White is not the only one excited about the new field.
“I’m a big fan of this,” Duke football head coach David Cutcliffe said. “We’re certainly going to respect what Wallace Wade Stadium is. It will be a new stadium, but it will be recognizable as Wallace Wade Stadium. I think what it will do more than anything else is become more and more fan-friendly.”
The Finch-Yeager Building will come down while students are away for winter break and construction will begin in early January, White said. The new press box and concourse level—which includes a new plaza and gate entrances—will be under construction throughout 2015 but "should be done before the 2016 season," according to the athletic department's official release.
In the meantime, the athletic department will explore several options regarding the placement of media next year. The most likely resolution would be to seat members of the press around the top of the bowl in tented areas.
"[2015] is going to be a temporary solution for a lot of things, including media," senior associate athletics director for external affairs Jon Jackson said. "There's literally three or four different scenarios that could play out—the most aggressive being if they got occupancy for one floor there's potential to do the media in the press area and I've seen other stadiums that have done it. Most likely, outside, under shelter."
In addition to the new building, there will be several other projects underway throughout the 2015 season, meaning the areas surrounding Wallace Wade will be crowded in the coming year.
"In April, the frontal addition for Cameron [Indoor Stadium] and the—I call it the addendum building in the front of Murray [Building]—Scott Pavillion, those things will start to be in construction mode," White said. "We're going to have heavy-duty construction around here for a long time once it's all underway. Then of course we're creating a plaza out there. So when you put all those pieces together, there will be a heck of a lot going on."
Aside from the Wallace Wade renovations, a pair of other projects started earlier this year are nearing completion. White said the new Williams Track is now just two weeks away from occupancy and Kennedy Tower—which will service both Koskinen Stadium and the new track—will be completed by Christmas.
Although there has been initial pushback from alumni and University supporters who claim the money being spent on the athletic facilities could be best spent elsewhere, White points toward the athletic fields on Bassett Drive as evidence of the calculations that go into each new addition.
Prior to the construction of the fields, many claimed their location by the Duke gate would detract from the aesthetic appeal and be too far from the students. But these worries have been quelled, as White calls the field one of the best additions the department has made in his time.
"The thing we get the biggest bang out of any dollar we've invested in my short time here is the other side of Basset, those three fields," White said. "I drive by at 11:30 at night and there are rec guys out there. We're using those fields night and day. That's the best return-on-investment of anything we've done so far."
All fans in attendance Saturday will be able to join the bulldozers down on the field to take part in the initial ground-moving and kick off the new-era Wallace Wade.
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