[OT] Cornell Victorious fund in Cornell Sun

[billhoward]

Article in the Weds. 12/1/04 Cornell Daily Sun on the now-concluded Cornell Victorious athletics campaign. Most of the story is on renovations to Schoellkopf Hall and construction of a football-exclusive extension on the east side (the one closer to Lynah) of the existing Schoellkopf Hall. It will house the football team locker room and a "football traditon" room. The existing Hall of Fame room overlooking the field goes away, replaced by the original open air balcony. If that passage is correct, that kills off a warm, indoor spot (okay, it's a long view to the south end goal line) where a small but dedicated crowd could watch a soccer or lacrosse match on the most raw of fall or spring days.

Ths Sun (Owen Bochner) quotes head coach Jim Knowles as saying, "Schoellkopf will be the best facility in the league, [and] it has to be one of the best facilities in [NCAA Division] I-AA when it's all done."

Also mention of renovation of the golf course and the imrpovement of what will be left of upper Alumni Field especially for men's/women's soccer once the Life Sciences building goes in. No mention in this article on anything being done / not done for Lynah.

I know Cornell was founded for academics and Ezra wasn't thinking about Ken Dryden or Ed Marinaro or Dave LeNeveu or Ryan McClay showing up a century later, but it is kind of sad to see the athletic complex getting squeezed and reduced every generation. Funny that Cornell, next to Dartmouth the most rural of the Ivies, has such a land crunch.

You also have to wonder how long Schoellkopf (the Crescent stands) will stand for. At some point it's going to need major renovation and maybe, as with Princeton's Palmer Stadium, it will be cheaper to start afresh and be replaced with a smaller structure that gets used for more than football game seating (eg with meeting rooms, maybe classrooms). Maybe, because of the sloping ground, it can be more than just stands. That and/or a chunk of the upper parking lot, are about all that's left for contiguous expansion of Cornell sports facilities.

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/01/41ad57500e0ee

[puff]

The problem with Cornell though, is that although its a rather rural campus, its also pretty sprawling. Needing a new building, they could either put it farther away from Campus, causing students to have to walk farther for classes, or move fill in the spaces. Yeah, it does kinda suck for athletics to lose thier central locations on campus, but IMO, it makes more sense to have practices at the end or beginning of the day farther out, and the classes where students are running between all day closer together.

[KeithK]

[q]You also have to wonder how long Schoellkopf (the Crescent stands) will stand for. At some point it's going to need major renovation and maybe, as with Princeton's Palmer Stadium, it will be cheaper to start afresh and be replaced with a smaller structure that gets used for more than football game seating (eg with meeting rooms, maybe classrooms). Maybe, because of the sloping ground, it can be more than just stands. That and/or a chunk of the upper parking lot, are about all that's left for contiguous expansion of Cornell sports facilities. [/q]Entirely possible that this could happen.  But the first thought that comes to mind when you mention the possibility of a smaller structure is "What about graduation?"  While the football team may not fill the Crescent, the last weekend in May certainly does.  There really isn't any other facility on campus that can handle the numbers, unless you want to have multiple ceremonies or use close circuit TV as in the bad weather plans.

Assuming there's no problem with structural integrity (which I know nothing about), why would there be a need for a major renovation.  Yes, the bathrooms and concessions are way out of date, but you could probably fix that without needing to demolish the entire structure.  Team facilities are in a different structure so there's no need there.  I'm sure I'm missing some things, but it doesn't seem like there's much of a good reason to replace the Crescent. (Bill, I know you're just speculating, but I'm just trying to think it through.)

[David Harding]

[Q]puff Wrote:

 The problem with Cornell though, is that although its a rather rural campus, its also pretty sprawling. Needing a new building, they could either put it farther away from Campus, causing students to have to walk farther for classes, or move fill in the spaces. Yeah, it does kinda suck for athletics to lose thier central locations on campus, but IMO, it makes more sense to have practices at the end or beginning of the day farther out, and the classes where students are running between all day closer together.[/q]

The way it looks to me over the decades is that while some new varsity facilities have moved further out, notably tennis and polo, to get space for new buildings, what seems to have been squeezed away from the central location of Upper Alumni Field is all the intramural sports.

[puff]

Thats very true, but having having thier own fields on north helps them too. Makes thier programs more visable to the freshmen, the one's who need to be drawn in. Upperclassmen who want to play know where to go. Also it gives them control over the fields so they don't have to compete with other requests for times during the fall and spring.

[billhoward]

Ideally, intramural playing fields would be near the dorms and especially near freshman dorms. There also ought to be convenientaly located recreational fields available just for doing unorganized things. In the scheme of things, major sports push out minor sports, varsity pushes out JV / freshman / club sports, they push out intramurals, and intramurals push out spur-of-the-moment soccer.

It's too bad Upper Alumni Field is getting sqeezed, and Cornellians going back a generation may recall, or think they recall, that when Lower Alumni Field was replaced by an academic building, the entire Upper Alumni Field was supposed to remain fields in perpetuity. But it's probably not woven into the university charter.

Before Lower Alumni Field was, ah, repurposed, it was possible in spring to stumble acrosss the street from an afternoon ILR class and watch the varsity lacrosse team play. So Schoellkopf is only a few steps farther, but there's a beauty in 4,000 fans filling 4,000 seats worth of bleachers rather than 4,000 spread out across 20,000 seats, especially when you're separated from the field by the four or six lanes of the running track. That's what makes Princeton Class of '52 Field so nice: Even with 1,000 fans there, it looks intimate and when Cornell or a major southern power plays there, the place is just about full.

[Greg Berge]

The Crescent itself is a beautiful, and signature, structure.  I wouldn't want to lose that merely for the sake of utility.  We've done plenty of that around the university for the last 75 years, and the results are depressing.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 Ideally, intramural playing fields would be near the dorms and especially near freshman dorms. There also ought to be convenientaly located recreational fields available just for doing unorganized things.[/q]

There used to be two of those next to Helen Newman, but they built a dorm on top of one of them.

[billhoward]

[Q]KeithK Wrote: ...   But the first thought that comes to mind when you mention the possibility of a smaller structure is "What about graduation?"  While the football team may not fill the Crescent, the last weekend in May certainly does.  There really isn't any other facility on campus that can handle the numbers, unless you want to have multiple ceremonies or use close circuit TV as in the bad weather plans. Assuming there's no problem with structural integrity (which I know nothing about), why would there be a need for a major renovation.  Yes, the bathrooms and concessions are way out of date, but you could probably fix that without needing to demolish the entire structure.  Team facilities are in a different structure so there's no need there.  I'm sure I'm missing some things, but it doesn't seem like there's much of a good reason to replace the Crescent. (Bill, I know you're just speculating, but I'm just trying to think it through.)
[/q]

Right, this was entirely what-if speculation about 10 or 25 years into the future. As best I know, the Schoellkopf Field Crescent isn't falling down. My recollection is that Schoellkopf underwent significant rework circa 1986 (and I believe a third generation of artificial turf in 1999), so it’s good at least through its centennial coming up in 11 years. Cornell archives say the field was created in 1915 though the Crescent, 20,950 seats (West stands hold 4,647, total = 25,597), didn’t come until 1924, meaning you could celebrate the centennial twice. And the Crescent is a Cornell trademark structure you wouldn't want to mess with. For what it’s worth, the Columbia Spectator (okay, we’re reaching here) says Schoellkopf Field is the Ivy League’s best sports facility:“A gorgeous setting for a football game. From the stands one can see the sprawling fall foliage through the Ithaca hills. Schoellkopf also boasts the Ivy League's best pressbox, one that is close to the field, luxurious, warm, and spacious. The only drawback is having to look down at Astroturf. Otherwise, if Mother Nature cooperates--and it doesn't always in the upstate fall--there is no better place to watch a football game in the Ivy League than Schoellkopf.” http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/02/26/3e5c8507afdda?in_archive=1

But nothing lasts forever. Princeton's demolished-in-1997 Palmer Stadium was built in 1914. Harvard Stadium, capacity 30,898, said to be the nation's oldest, dates to 1903. Yale Bowl, capacity now down to 64,269, was built 1914. Penn's Franklin Field, capacity 52,958, was rebuilt in in 1922 (the original dates to 1895) and has always seemed old, spindly, and rickety, although maybe that's because I've never been to a football or lacrosse game there when it wasn't bitterly cold and windy. (The Dartmouth and Brown stadiums are more like big high school fields, and Columbia’s Wien Stadium, while nice, is 100 blocks off-campus.) In roundabout terms, building a new 25,000 seat football stadium is $50 million ($2,000 a seat) and you have to play one season on the road while the new one is built.

Keith, you have a solid point about the need for a facility that can hold everyone for graduation, although that might also argue for replacing Barton with a 22,000 seat indoor facility since it does rain from time to time, or building a Carrier Dome South. (Maybe we could front-project the fall foliage onto the inside of the dome.) Still, there will come a time when Schoellkopf crumbles. A new stadium also needs to be big enough to allow the university to host regional or national events such as the NCAA lacrosse quarterfinals, or a Heptagonal track meet (if the stadium has a running track), or a state high school soccer / football / lacrosse / field hockey championship. That's also good recruiting PR. Plus the occasional rock concert and of course graduation. Given how popular the NCAA lacrosse finals have become, I think the hosts will have to have 40,000 seat capacities, not 20,000 or Cornell’s current 26,000. (The days of the NCAA allowing a small facility, say for hockey at Lake Placid, capacity 2,000 at the time, now 8,000 to host a national hockey championship, are long gone.)

And then you have to make the tough decision as to whether a running track should be part of the field. As well as whether the field is grass or artificial. (The biggest choice is dome or no dome, and while a dome is most unnatural and probably not going to happen in my purely hypothetical Schoellkopf replacement, Ithaca is not Miami or Palo Alto.) Princeton was able to use grass in its new football stadium because of the auxiliary lacrosse/soccer field which has artificial turf and lights. And it reduced capacity from 45,750 for the old Palmer Stadium to a still spacious (for Ivy events) 27,800. If you could roll the clock back 30 years, Cornell could have done the same thing Princeton did with its auxiliary soccer/lax field with Lower Alumni Field (artificial turf, real stands, locker/changing area underneath, so one field can take constant use and abuse by multiple men's and women's teams). Then Schoellkopf could possibly return to grass. But you can't turn back time.

Seeing the new Agganis Arena for hockey at Boston University (6300 seats) nearing completion makes you wonder if the pace of new construction for sports facilities may be forced by the need to stay competitive in sports you (the university) care about, not just the timetable for the old building to crumble. This is the second new arena BU has built since Lynah went up.

[Liz \'05]

Having lived in said dorm, I never noticed a lack of available grass to sun myself on (assuming there was sun) or play frisbee, etc., on.  While the field is more of a big grassy area than a field now, it's still used both for intramural competition (Phi Tug) and spur-of-the-moment competition.  The area between Dickson, Court, and Balch is also well used.

[MB]

I'm still bitter that they turned the upper level of Gruman Courts into football offices.  Damn racquetball players in my squash courts...

[Al DeFlorio]

At long last, the Sun addresses the "refurbishment" of Lynah:

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/03/41affee41a179