The Florida State football team is undergoing a serious renovation this offseason.
The Seminoles' home, Doak Campbell Stadium, is undergoing a seriously drastic renovation this season.
FSU is currently in the middle of an extensive $265 million rebuild of Doak, which has spanned two offseasons in an effort to bring the FSU football stadium into the 21st century.
After FSU gutted the innards of the stadium and added temporary seating to get temporary capacity of Doak to just over 55,000 for the 2024 season, it is now well into the process this offseason of installing a new club level on the west sideline as well as a host of other premium seating options across the stadium.
Talking to the FSU Board of Trustees on Friday morning, director of athletics Michael Alford gave an update on how the construction process and ticket sales of the new premium seating areas are progressing.
Alford said the construction crew is well into Phase 2 of the project and working 24-hour shifts right now. With a hard deadline of late August for FSU's scheduled 2025 opener vs. Alabama on Aug. 30, he anticipates substantial construction on the stadium will be done by the end of July.
"Completion of the stadium will be in July of 2025, when they hand us over the keys to the stadium," Alford said. "There will be some anticipated events coming in, some grand openings. We'll be communicating with you guys."
As far as ticket sales, Alford said FSU has sold 92% of the anticipated capacity of the West Sideline Club (2,174 seats) and 82% of the renovated Champions Club (2,860 seats) have been sold. The process of selling chair-back seats on the west sideline began more recently and 29% of the expected capacity of those seats (2,379) have been sold.
Alford shared that FSU has raised $35 million in capital commitments from WSC, Champions Club and chairback seats and $74.5 million in total capital commitments towards the project when adding Founder's Suite pledges.
BOT notes: Comments from president Richard McCullough, AD Michael Alford
While many of the reasons for the renovation that dealt with updating the gameday experience and providing more versatile seating options for games. However, there were also some needed safety updates on the stadium that required a renovation and some other things that could be addressed.
Most notably, FSU is making an effort to make Doak more easily usable for hosting concerts and other events outside of football season. Previously, the arches inside the stadium prevented semi-trucks from being able to access the field, severely limiting the events that could be hosting on the field.
This renovation project is already addressing that and Alford said he's already in talks with event organizers and promoters about the stadium being available for large-scale events starting after the 2025 football season.
"Huge economic impact. We're already in discussions with some concert promoters going in to start in spring of 2026. Once football is over, a January/February timeline," Alford said. "We're talking to motocross, I'd love to have dirt season in the stadium. We're already in those discussions, trying to book those and let people know that it's available."
The stadium isn't the only sizable construction project going on at the moment for the FSU athletic department. The Dunlap Football Center, a football-only facility set to be an expansion of FSU's indoor practice facility, has also been under construction this offseason and has seen some serious strides made since football season ended in late November.
Alford said he expects substantial construction of the football center to be finished in late August and he expects the football team to move in to the facility during its first bye week of the season Sept. 7 through 13.
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