PULLMAN – Washington State’s football stadium remains pint-sized for big-time college football, but offseason renovations have provided Martin Stadium with a big-time appearance.
“Now when you come to my stadium,” junior cornerback Nolan Washington said with a smile, “we actually look like a Pac-12 stadium.”
The new press box, club lounge, suites and other premium seats dominate the south side of the stadium.
Senior athletic director John Johnson said the stadium upgrades will cost $65 million. That leaves $15 million, as expected, for a projected football operations building, which the Cougars expect to be approved in time to start construction at the end of the season.
That west-end facility, which is expected to cost approximately $65 million, will include football-only offices for coaches, lockers, weights, meeting and training rooms.
All of the suites and loges have been purchased, as have most of the club seats. Johnson, who oversees the stadium project, said the new seats — plus food and drink purchased by those ticket-holders — will generate at least $3 million a year.
“A very conservative estimate,” Johnson said.
Capacity of the Pacific-12 Conference’s smallest football stadium will be about 33,522. That’s up from 32,248 last year, but down from the 40,000 listed years ago — which, WSU insiders will tell you, was a few thousand more than the stadium actually held.
The arrival of coach Mike Leach, a highly successful coach at Texas Tech, and the new-and-improved stadium has created a buzz among WSU fans eager to put an end to an eight-year string of losing seasons.
More than 13,000 season tickets have been sold — an increase of 3,000 from a year ago — and 1,102 single-game tickets were sold in the first 15 minutes they were made available to the general public earlier this month.
Last year, the Cougars sold 700 single-game tickets the entire first day of sales.
Johnson predicts the Cougars will have their first sellout in five years when Eastern Washington visits Pullman on Sept. 8 for WSU’s home opener.
The Cougars are eager to have fans see the stadium improvements for themselves.
“Until you walk on the field and see the mass of the structure … the website doesn’t do it justice, how massive it is,” Johnson said.
“I think it’s going to create a different environment from the noise standpoint as we close it more,” Johnson said. “And the premium seating and the press (box) are second to none.”
No tax dollars are being used for either football project.
Bonds, donations and millions of dollars of revenue generated by the new Pac-12 television contracts will cover most of the bills.
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