I would suggest $1500-$2000 per seat based on comps. For athletic training center, Sac State spent about $650/sq ft in today's dollars and Cal about $1150/sq ft.

If you have a complete design, a good scheduler, and qualified tradespeople, you can get done quickly. Many big projects start construction before design is done, leading to delays and rework.

You'd think. It's not like UCD is standing in line down at the Yolo county building department, but they are still going to follow state building code, National Electric Code, National Fire Protection Association code, plus self-imposed standards like gender neutral restrooms and breastfeeding support rooms. My guess is that the university has its own building official along with the fire marshal. They may well be tougher than Yolo county inspectors. At the end of the day the architects and engineers aren't going to want the liability of fudging things.

In my mind the first thing you have to do is define what it is that needs to be built - how many seats are in scope and are there key limiting factors, like can't build above a certain height, must provide a home for endangered woodpeckers, or whatever. The trap here is to define a budget that sounds good and then try to back into a scope that fits. Invariably, 3 things happen - 1. the project takes forever and inflation happens to your costs but your funding stays the same, 2. you find an architect/contractor who say they can make it work but when push comes to shove it turns out they assumed you wanted inferior materials and that they could get every subcontract negotiated below market rate, 3. people lie about what is realistic - contractors who want the job, and PR people who don't want to walk back public promises.

So how many seats do we need to fill current or projected demand? This needs to be a real number, not a build-it and maybe they come number. Every dollar you spend on seats that never fill could be going to a scholarship endowment. In fact you probably have to emotionally acknowledge that the whole endeavor makes no financial sense. Half the football season is before school starts. Not going to fill the stadium. So we are building this for 3 or 4 days out of the year. To fill the stadium we are discounting tickets to $15 or $20. There is no business case to invest thousands per seat in capital plus annual maintenance for annual revenue of less than $100 per seat. Now, there are impossible-to-quantify things like more people at a fun game = more donors someday. Don't let the bean counters try to smoke and mirror a performa to rely on this. Acknowledge we are building a strategic value money pit because we love Aggie Football and be emotionally OK with this.

So, for example sake, we decide we need 2300 seats. Doesn't matter where they go or what they look like, bottom dollar is we need 26 more toilets and 39 more linear feet of exits. More concessions and ticket booths? Food trucks pads and mobile ticketing are probably a better investments. These are the non-sexy items that executives hate to fund. But it is critical to do the homework here because you might find something unexpected, like if for example, the sewer force main in LaRue Rd can't handle one more toilet without upgrading the lift station at great expense. Then you have to decide if the project will be burdened with that critical infrastructure or if there are other funds for that. Now you can come up with a seating concept with the features you want. At this point you can start to come up with a real cost. It of course costs money to do all this homework and you're not even sure if you're doing the project yet or what it costs. Executives hate spending money to realize something is a bad idea, but you can't look at this wasted money. It would not be a terrible idea to invest in this homework now and develop a strategy with meaningful estimates and timeline.

It is hard to know when the market is in a peak or valley when you are in it, but ideally, you fundraise when the market is good, go to design and construction in a low so that you can open when the market is rebounding. Your advantage for building when the market is cooler with either donated or bond money is that contractors are hungry because corporate capital projects dry up to prop up quarterly stock prices. But if you have the money and need the seats now, don't wait for a recession because inflation may bite you in the meantime.

So I have spent the past few years project managing stadium/arena construction and renovation for a multi-facility owner. (Anyone in Athletics feel free to PM me if you wish). I did a brief count, and there are about 8800 fixed seats, which means they figure about 1000 per endzone. Measuring, they are allocating about 15sqft per person on the grass, which is typical for a "non concentrated occupancy". I don't know Davis code, but nationally, you provide 0.2" of exit width per occupant. I count 18 pedestrian gates, call em 10' wide and we're right on the money.

To expand Aggie Stadium, the seats are the cheap part. The money gets tied up in supporting infrastructure IF that is not already in place, as well as administrative construction soft costs. For example, in my jurisdiction, I have to keep a ratio of 1 toilet per 90 seats which is supposed to ensure a wait time of less than 3 minutes. Let's just say that's what the building department at UCD uses, that would mean AS has about 120 toilets. Even simple restrooms are more expensive than you think. Now, hopefully the planners recognized this as a possibility and upsized the utility loops in the stadium. Costs very little at initial construction but gets very expensive to redo later.

Now, what expansion would make the most sense? Until we routinely break 10,000, the only thing that makes sense is to negotiate a standing room oversell with the fire marshal and bring in portolets if the math requires. For a permanent structure I would say a second deck on the Aggie Pack side if you could commit to mostly 7pm games. Cantilevered over the AP would be expensive, but a steel superstructure over the walkway and restroom buildings with aluminum bleachers would be economical. In fact you can see the gaps in the restroom buildings are spaced right for stairways going up. Lets say you did 20yd to 20yd, so 5 sections or roughly 2300 seats if its the same size sections as existing. You'd probably get the same net gain filling in the end zones, but in the process take away a popular family hillside and replace it with poor sightline seats that aren't going to command much premium - unless you move the AP to north end zone like Toomey. That was a lot of fun down there. But back to brass tacks, all that concrete is going to cost you more than a steel structure. That kind of poured in place concrete is a lot of material and labor intensive... gotta get it graded, stabilized, concrete trucks there, formed up, finishers working and everything measured right in the field. Off by an inch? Get the jackhammers. With an engineered steel structure it all comes precut from the factory with less opportunity for expensive field screw ups.

As to the comment about the cost of steel, that's probably not what broke the budget on Aggie Stadium. In real life, they built it at a construction peak - shortage of workers and supplies in a boom drives general contractor prices, kind of like right now. If they had waited to build it in the recession, you would have found bricklayers and plumbers working at a discount. Also oil prices were spiking, which had to have influenced the cost of the massive earthmoving effort to dig that bowl and then truck in all that concrete. Throw in a wet winter and the GC was able to justify his underbid - note that up to that point the contractor had mainly only built apartment buildings. Looking at comparables, you probably could have done a 20,000 seat (plain but functional) surface stadium with a qualified contractor for the price we paid.

Ok, end of the novel. I could talk at length on this, so let me know if you want more.

Meanwhile Davis police are riding around on toy scooters giving out tickets for insufficient bicycle reflectors. Priorities.

At the time this was announced we reached out to the Athletics department and requested to purchase a piece of bleacher as a souvenir. Response started as "huh, why?" then to "hmm maybe we can work something out, we'll be in touch", to "lead, asbestos, red tape". Being in construction industry myself, lead paint on the superstructure was plausible. Very little chance of the aluminum bleachers being hot. More likely scenario was they already had a demo contract in place and the bid was based on the contractor ripping it down (not gently) and getting the metal recycling proceeds. If I had been in town, I would have tried to work something out with the demo guy. A cold 24-pack gets you just about anything in construction.

I recall several similar sprees when I lived there years ago. I don't know that they target Asians so much as anybody who just might not be paying attention to their surroundings at that moment. Beginning of the school year is easy pickings I'm sure. When caught it usually turned out to be someone from West Sac or East Bay, and always a dark hoodie. Good reminder that bad things can happen anywhere day or night.

No doubt. Leading up to a game every restaurant server and grocery store clerk is wearing Montana gear and pretty much everything came to a standstill on game day. Lot of good smelling food going on at the pregame, so yeah, it probably is the envy of college football in terms of the city supporting the team. Kind of reminds me of a smaller version of Gainesville, FL. Keep in mind that Missoula is about the size of Davis, but happens to be the second largest city in the state with many miles of nothing between it any literally anything.

I've been using the Pluto app on Fire Stick. I use the TuneIn app on my phone to get the 1140 audio feed and mute the TV if the announcers suck like they did this week.

In my era the Band-uh mustered about 50 to every away football game (every away basketball game too at one point), typically drove ourselves and slept on whatever gym floor we could for free. Last few years travel has been limited to CP, Suck State, and Anaheim, but they have a new band director so maybe some new hope.

My experience going to EWU and Montana some years ago was that EWU was more pleasant to visit, kind of same vibe as our home games. Montana has a more intense gameday experience for sure, though I was unimpressed with the quality of their fans. I remember getting spit at - and it wasn't drunk frat boys. It was sober middle age guys in dad jeans and New Balances doing it with their 9 year old sons. At that time, very few Aggie fans went to either except a few players parents.

Lack of affordable housing in Davis is a real issue. West Village was supposed to be part of the answer, but a 1 bedroom apartment there is over $2k per month. Granted, by San Francisco standards this would be a bargain, but hard to call this university subsidized housing "affordable". There are a lot of "I got mine so f-- you" types in Davis who fight all growth, whether responsible or not.

My first thought? Thank goodness they didn't choose the site adjoining Suck State.

In all seriousness though, I think there is value in this endeavor if done correctly - that is expanding UC Davis' circle of influence and providing students with more meaningful connections to future employers. At my company, demonstrated experience with internships is as important in recruiting as the framed degree on the wall. This could also help attract some companies to the Sacramento area that want to be near a center of education but would have been too big for Davis proper (like an Amazon-type campus). Maybe could renew some public interest in the Causeway Classic, but in a more mature manner, the way the Horseshoe Classic has become.

If done incorrectly, this could be a step down the path of transforming UC Davis from a residential university to a regional commuter mega-university with a majority of students eventually never learning to navigate a bike circle because they haven't set foot on the namesake campus. I'd rather let Sac State own the business of wide scale vocational education for the masses while we stay focused on changing the world, elitist as that may sound.

Or this could turn out to be nothing more than another collection of very expensive LEED certified beige-concrete-and-glass office buildings that don't amount to much other than increased payroll and perceived feather in the cap of the mayor.

Interesting. Looks like they followed the money trail (nothing wrong with that). For equestrian they are able to categorize some of the expenses as academic through the vet school and beach volleyball had a donor step up for the facility. Comparatively speaking a beach volleyball center is cheap, but having just been involved in building one, I have to say there is more to it than just digging a sand pit. It must be the RIGHT sand, and yes, I've had coaches insist on measuring the sand grains with micrometers.

My opinion is that rowing seems to make sense. Overhead is likely less expensive for one larger team than two smaller ones. Rowing has limited facility cost (local rivers), an established club base, and several opponents in California, including Suck State.

Rugby has an established club base, but is incredibly hard on turf (either natural or artificial) and would probably require a new dedicated facility ~$3M. Few opponents one west coast. Beach volleyball would require a new facility if we wanted to host anything ~$1M. Numerous opponents in California and certainly wouldn't hurt the, uh, local scenery. But not sure if we could compete on recruiting against schools that are actually near a real beach. Fencing would have a low facility cost if it could negotiate time in Hickey or Pavilion, and might be a novelty here, but few opponents on west coast. Equestrian could probably tap some "old money" from wealthy ranchers but also seems like animal care could add significant cost, with some risk of a future SeaWorld-type problem should there be any incidents that draw the attention of animal rights activists. Few opponents on the west coast and it would seem that transporting horses all over the country could have some complexities.

I work with a major K-State fan. This will be fun Monday.

close the browser and then start over at kstatesports.com . A second stream showed up. One for audio + video in addition to the one you have been watching for audio only.

I was listening to the KDVS stream but they lost their internet connection and back in the studio all they have said is "this just isn't working out tonight..." So I guess I will be listening to the K-State feed.

I recall when I was a student, I had a couple friends who were leaders in a student organization but were a thorn in the side of a non-academic university staff member. Senior year, they were suspended for alleged "alcohol violations" that said staff member overheard from a third party. Student Judicial Affairs suspended the students from participating in the organization while they launched an investigation. They pressured the students to "confess" and take a plea deal that basically said they could return but any hint of further misconduct and they would be kicked out of the university, forfeiting rights to a hearing. They refused to take the plea deal, so SJA allowed the "investigation" to go on for months. There was no evidence and no witnesses came forward. Eventually the students were declared innocent -- with a week left of school after being frozen out of an entire spring quarter. The appearance was that SJA purposely prolonged the process so the staff member wouldn't have to deal with students he didn't like and the students would be "punished" without having to be found guilty.

Also keep in mind that the burden of proof is simply "is it more likely than not" that the student committed the infraction, not "beyond reasonable doubt." And when all else fails, they pull the "violation of principles of community" accusation out, which is about as amorphous as it comes. Point being, you can expect about as fair a hearing at SJA as a political dissident in Soviet Russia.

All that said, I am not suggesting that Chima is even under investigation by Student Judicial Affairs. This could be strictly internal to the team or Athletics. And depending on the issue, FERPA may prevent anyone from saying anything.

UCOP occupies the whole building at 1111 Franklin St. Offices are floors 5-12 and parking on 1-4.
They have several additional spaces rented--
300 Lakeside Dr, floors 3, 5, 6, 7, 12
1111 Broadway, floors 14 and 21
415 20th St, floors 3 and 4 (lower floors are UC Berkeley labs)

As far as Div of Ag and Natural Resources, most of the people who do anything productive are already at Davis or local county offices. Most of the people in Oakland get in the way of anything productive so I'm curious how excited the local crowd is on this idea.

Despite being "non scholarship" I guarantee you the whole USD football team is not paying full MSRP on tuition. They can certainly offer non-athletic scholarships and aid to individuals who happen to be athletes. Even if USD didn't join Big Sky, I think they had 3 OOC games this year. It would be cool if those regularly became UCD, CP, and SAC. Perhaps there could be a California Cup rivalry between the four. Part of what made the NCAC days fun (aside from winning) was that schools were close enough that you knew the opponent and visiting fans would travel. Doubt you find many people in the general population in California who know (or care) what state Weber State is in.

There certainly haven't been any sell-outs lately, but one thing to keep in mind is that even in a sell-out scenario, the Aggie Pack doesn't "look" full. On paper each seat is allocated a certain amount of real estate on the bleacher, say 18". The students stand closer than that and crowd toward the center. There seems to be a reluctance to oversell facilities these days, so the edges of the section won't ever fill in.

I get the idea of giving the students great seats since they are helping to fund the stadium, but there was something lost with not having the AP in the North End Zone. That added a dimension to the coin toss that you did not want to be an opponent facing north in the 4th quarter. They used to pack that grandstand like sardines. As I remember, you just showed your ID and got waved in so they probably weren't counting too closely.