It’s been almost 75 years since the first game was played in Doak Campbell Stadium. It had seating for 15,000 fans.
Fast forward some decades, and sellout crowds used to be close to 80,000.
Now, a $265 million renovation will shrink the stadium’s seating capacity while adding an assortment of enhancements. It now holds just over 67,000 seats with new options for season ticket packages and upgrades
The Seminoles will play to a sold-out crowd for the game against Alabama on August 30.
For Speaking Of, a small team from WFSU Public Media threw on hard hats and neon vests for a tour last week. Our guide was Ben Zierden, FSU Senior Associate Athletics Director. He oversees big events and construction projects like this one.
"We basically dropped the entire West Side from right here to all the way to the other end. It was just dirt all the way back to the University Center building over there, and then we built back.
Everything that we're walking through is brand new. It's not even a renovation. It's actually brand spanking new. This here is the Main Concourse. So this is an area for all general seating fans that will come in and have access to this.
We've got some premium areas, our Founders area, and then our West Club. That's a very specific area where you have to have a ticket for that area to get into it. But even the areas that we're about to go through right now for the general public are vastly improved in terms of how open it is, how nice it is, the social area.
We've got a bar here that's on the outside that's available for anybody to walk up and enjoy a drink and sit and watch the game on a TV if they want to. It's a nice clean area, especially compared to what we had before. All the concessions are brand new. All the bathrooms are brand new.” ~Ben Zierden
We saw bigger seats and wider aisles, more mesh seats to keep air moving, and additional hospitality locations created especially for holders of certain season ticket packages.
On the east side of the stadium, some repairs and upgrades were made using the $20 million FSU received from the Tallahassee Leon County Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency.
“That was where we really looked at life safety issues,” says Michael Alford, FSU Vice President and Director of Athletics.
He says ramps “weren’t ADA compliant; they weren’t code compliant. Lighting wasn’t code compliant… We had to go through and remove combustible materials (like) wooden structures that are no longer to code. We had to put down slip surfaces on the concourse… We widened the aisles and put in handrails. That’s the right thing to do; we lost some seats because of that.”
Alford says the big $265 million renovation was a separate and necessary makeover of the west side. He refers to it as “deferred maintenance.”
“Quit putting a Band-Aid on it, and let’s fix this thing,” Alford says. “Football here brings in over a hundred million dollars of economic impact on the six Saturdays (home games) to Tallahassee and Leon County. So we’ve got to keep the stadium running for the community.”
FSU also surveyed season ticket holders to find out what amenities they wanted and what they were willing to pay.
“We put in the elements that they wanted,” Alford says. “You had only about three fan experiences: a suite, a metal bleacher, or the Champions Club. But now there is going to be probably 15 or 16 different options, different price points. You can choose what experience you want to have when you come to Doak.”
Hear the entire segment by clicking LISTEN above.
By the way, we’ll be talking about Tallahassee City Hall politics soon. We’d like to hear your thoughts about the mayoral race, the race for Commissioner Jeremy Matlow’s seat, city leadership, and more. You can leave us a message at wfsu.org/voice. We may use your response on an upcoming episode.
