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Roth: Time For Long-Range View Of Facilities
4/20/2009 2:15:00 PM | Athletics
DURHAM, N.C. ? A prominent architectural firm with a long list of notable college sports projects in its portfolio has been hired to develop a master plan for athletic and recreational facilities at Duke.
HNTB Architecture, headquartered in Kansas City, is expected to begin work by the end of this month on a 30-week effort that could set the blueprint for how Duke addresses its various sports-related facilities needs over the next decade and beyond.
“Like the rest of the university, the task here is to be ambitious, to be bold, to think outside the box toward the future and build from that,” said Mike Cragg, senior associate athletics director and the department's point man for facilities. “At the end of the process, we should have an idea of what Duke athletics and Duke recreation will look like in 10-15 years and what it will take to get there.”
“It's an exercise that a lot of institutions have gone through over the last decade or two, and I think it will be a very fruitful exercise for us here at Duke,” added vice president and director of athletics Kevin White, who pinpointed the need for a master plan during his first month on the job last summer and tapped Cragg to manage the process.
“We've got a great set of facilities already in place, but a number of them could be updated or enhanced, without question. And then there are some possibilities for taking a look at new facilities as we move into the future.”
The Strategic Plan for Duke Athletics that was approved by the Board of Trustees a year ago identified several pressing facilities needs for student recreation as well as intercollegiate athletics, including enhancements and renovations for the football and baseball complexes. Those recommendations, input from focus groups and collaboration with campus officials will be incorporated by HNTB into a comprehensive master plan that will be integrated with the university's overall master plan, according to university architect John Pearce.
“An emphasis in working with the development of the scope of this is to reinforce the need for the consultants to take a really strong look at the recreational requirements we have and to assist us in finding places within our 2,000-acre campus as to where they can be accommodated,” noted Pearce.
“Let's be sure we look at this in a holistic way. Everybody (in athletics) has been clear that we really need to be thinking about the deficiencies in our recreation facilities. When various people say we need more space for teams to play or more places for people to play Frisbee or something, we've got to be sure we're looking at all of that at the same time.”
HNTB brings extensive experience to the table, having completed athletic master plans for 12 NCAA Division I schools over the past decade. The list includes large state universities such as Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio State and Purdue; private institutions such as Harvard and Georgetown; service academies such as Air Force and Navy; and White's previous address, Notre Dame.
White commissioned HNTB to master-plan for the Fighting Irish shortly after he was hired there in 2000. In less than a decade, the plan led to about $125 million in improvements to the school's athletic physical plant. “Everything we determined we needed became a part of the plan, and it's interesting to see most of it (now) in place,” White said.
HNTB's sports division, created in 1975, has also been involved in the design of 34 minor league baseball stadiums, the development of Invesco Field in Denver and the expansion of several college football stadiums, including Ohio State's. The firm is a national leader in several other sectors, including transportation architecture, and recently was selected to design a new runway to handle the largest commercial planes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
Tom Tingle, national director of sports architecture for HNTB, is the firm's principal-in-charge for the Duke project. He guided the firm's $82 million expansion and renovation of Mackey Arena at Purdue and had a hand in several familiar design efforts in North Carolina while working for other firms. He was the project manager for portions of Charlotte Bobcats Arena, the expansion of Durham Bulls Athletic Park and the American Tobacco Historic District in downtown Durham, among others.
Tingle's HNTB team for the Duke job features: project manager Gerardo Prado, who previously worked on the athletic master plans for Notre Dame, Michigan and Kentucky; lead planner and designer Richard Farnan, a 36-year veteran of the firm and the principal designer for the Ohio State master plan; and project architect Scott Robinson, who designed the Notre Dame Stadium expansion.
As Pearce noted, priorities at Duke will include more than the much-needed enhancements to Wallace Wade Stadium, the football practice facility and Jack Coombs Field on West Campus. The school's strategic plan last year suggested that recreational facilities are at maximum capacity, with most physical education courses full, intramural participation capped at 2005 levels and club sports strapped for practice space. The report recommended the addition of at least three turf fields, expansion of the gym on East Campus and the construction of a recreation complex on New (now Central) Campus.
“That becomes one of the key elements in the very early stages of the master plan ? just identifying what the needs are and then linking them together with the goals and expectations of the university,” Tingle said.
“There is a starting point with the strategic plan, but we need to get into it in a tremendous amount of more detail,” he added. “We'll have to reevaluate the needs and demands that are being placed on the existing system and try to evaluate what is currently maxed out but also what is not being utilized or being underutilized. We'll see what kind of improvements are needed in those areas and also see if they in the right locations regarding the student population.”
The master plan should be completed by late in the fall. The economy could impact how quickly various elements of the master plan are phased into Duke's three campuses. White said the uncertain financial climate makes this a perfect time for planning.
“At some point the economy will turn around,” he said, “and we'll find ourselves in a position to identify some folks who can provide benefaction and resources to make these facilities become a reality. But I don't know that you can just wait until the economy turns back and then begin to plan. I think it makes great sense for us to get the planning part of this thing in place and then move into the future and hopefully make these facilities become a reality.”
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