July 20, 2005

Charleston, SC - With construction of a new 10,500-seat grandstand at Johnson Hagood Stadium under way, The Citadel is focusing on the next stage of its renovation project: building a $15 million tower to house club seats, sky boxes and a press box at the football stadium.

The military school has about $6 million on hand in the form of pledges and cash, and needs to borrow about $9 million to finance the tower project. Rather than borrow on the open market, The Citadel's Board of Visitors voted Tuesday to explore keeping the debt "inside The Citadel family."

The board approved a resolution calling for the administration to work toward borrowing the $9 million from The Citadel Foundation, The Citadel Brigadier Foundation and The Citadel Alumni Association. Any shortfall would be made up with an increase in student athletic fees, the resolution said.

Each of the support foundations would have to approve the plan. The Brigadier Foundation, which has a board meeting next month, raises money to pay for athletic scholarships at The Citadel.

There are several advantages to the plan approved by the board, said Col. Curt Holland, The Citadel's vice president of finance.

"We can go on the open market or we can borrow internally, and the proposal is to first look internally," Holland said. "The reason is that the interest we pay on that note, as we pay it back, will come back to us in the form of scholarships and things like that.

"Instead of us paying the interest to Bank of America or somebody like that, we will be paying it to ourselves. So it stays inside The Citadel family."

With the new west-side bleachers slated to be ready for the 2006 season, Holland said the new tower should not be far behind.

"In 2006, there will be seats for 10,500 people on the west side," he said. "What we'd love to be able to do, sometime within a year after that, is have completed that tower in behind those seats."

Another piece to the puzzle is the possibility of a readiness center for the S.C. National Guard at the stadium. The National Guard needs a new readiness center, and has often used Johnson Hagood as a staging area, Holland said. If Congress approves about $11 million for the readiness center, it could be built at Johnson Hagood and used as a shared facility by The Citadel and the National Guard. That would allow two wings filled with offices and meeting space to be built on both sides of the centerpiece tower at the stadium.

One sticking point with that plan: The Citadel would have to surrender about 2-1/2 acres of valuable parking space to the National Guard.

"If the National Guard piece comes to fruition, we will partner with them in a readiness center," said board chairman Billy Jenkinson. "If it doesn't, we will go with our Plan B and build our centerpiece. Either way, we are going to have this centerpiece done, with the Guard or without it."

If all of The Citadel's plans fall into place, within a year or two the Bulldogs could be playing in a 22,500-seat stadium with 10,500 new seats; a $15 million tower containing club seats, skyboxes and a pressbox; a new $1.4 million scoreboard, complete with big-screen video; $11 million worth of shared space with the National Guard; and the $3 million Altman Athletic Center, which opened in 2001.

The school installed temporary bleachers at Johnson Hagood last season and will do so again for the 2005 season, which begins Sept. 3 with a home game against Charleston Southern.

-- The Citadel has added a late signee in South Florence quarterback Carver Wright, a 6-2, 200-pounder who is likely to play receiver for the Bulldogs. Wright will report to campus with other freshmen next month.