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Bama News
BDS renovation starts Monday: What you need to know
Details on the construction at Bryant-Denny Stadium that will span the full offseason.
For a few hours Saturday, Bryant-Denny Stadium will be all about football. The home finale with Western Carolina kicks off at 11 a.m., in the last game before a makeover.
By Monday, the construction fences will surround most of the 90-year old home of Alabama. Nine-plus months of intense construction work will begin on the $92.5 million first phase of the stadium renovation approved over the summer.
High-end club seats and suites will replace seats on the west end, student social spaces will be added on the south end while four larger video boards will replace the existing ones in each of the corners. A new tunnel will also bore through the north end zone steps leading directly into the Alabama locker room as part of a new Walk of Champions experience.
Work has actually been quietly underway for a few weeks pouring 11 of the deep foundations for the new structure on the stadium's west side, said Alabama assistant AD for facilities, Brandon Sevedge. After Monday, the fences will surround two thirds of the stadium and extend into the north end zone plaza known for the Walk of Champions.
Most of the work for the next six to eight weeks will be done underground and with demolition inside the stadium. Little will be visible from the outside on a project with a large scale and tight timeline.
"Demolition is a big part of the project," Sevedge said. "Kind of the unique thing about this project is we're not working on one side. We're working everywhere."
The press box and club seating will be torn out on the west side to accommodate the Champions and Terrace clubs along with the Founders suites and with loge boxes.
The 10 Founders suites sold for $5 million apiece with 4-seat loge boxes requiring a $150,000 donation on top of $16,000 annual contributions. The initial contribution can be spread out over five years.
After the demolition is complete, work will begin on the stand-alone structure that will house the backend of those new club levels. It will extend beyond the current footprint of the stadium and will overhang Wallace Wade Avenue, which will also close for the duration of construction.
"The west side expansion is the most difficult part of the entire project," Sevedge said "and the reason why is you're building a structure up and you're not tying into the stadium until you get to the upper levels."
The expanded club level will also allow for a larger upper-deck concourse on the west side since it will be part of the club's roof.
New skyboxes are also coming to the east side, where the press box will be relocated. The north end zone seats will now include a bunker-style clubs similar to ones found on the sidelines of NFL stadiums like in Atlanta and Dallas.
That scale and multiple worksites within the stadium create the biggest challenge.
"It's spread out," Sevedge said. "It's probably one of the most intense projects the university has ever done in the athletic department. We're basically doing $10 million worth of work per month. Just imagine, we'll probably have up to 600 workers at the stadium each day during the peak. It's just a really tough project."
A typical project, Sevedge estimates, does $2-3 million of work per month.
The plan still makes room for the annual A-Day game to be played in Bryant-Denny this April, but it will be quite different from past events. There will be a temporary sound system and the new video boards will not be in place. Only a portion of the seating bowl will be able to accommodate fans at an event that's drawn 92,000 but has seen smaller crowds in recent years.
The new locker room tunnel will also require some rearrangement on the Walk of Champions. The new structure will extend approximately 60 feet further than the current steps, Sevedge said, so the championship plaques that line the walk will need to be pulled up and spaced closer together.
Inside the stadium, it's still unclear how the capacity will be impacted. After adding the south upper deck in 2010, the stadium was listed at 101,821 seats -- the seventh largest college stadium nationally. Michigan Stadium at 107,601 seats remains the largest.
The current plan that was approved over the summer differs from the original design announced in 2018. Scraped was the demolition of most of that new south upper deck for a student social deck and massive video board. More gathering spaces will be created under the stadium instead and the larger video boards will go in the same corner locations.
All of this work comes with a tight deadline
The timeline was narrow enough to move the AHSAA state football championships to Auburn (Dec. 4-6) so work could begin immediately following the end of Alabama's home schedule.
Everything needs to be complete by Sept. 12 when Alabama opens its 2020 home schedule with Georgia State.
Delays aren't an option.
"Really, the end date can't change," Sevedge said. "It really can't. It's going to be absorbed by more people and more labor."
For one more Saturday, however, the current version of Bryant-Denny Stadium will get one more day in the sun.
Seat neighbors displaced by the new club levels -- some of whom haven’t changed seats since the west upper deck was built in 1988 -- will get one more game before the demolition makes way for premium offerings.
| New options | 1-time donation* | annual donation | Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Champions Club | $10,000 | $3,500 | 10 years |
| Terrace Club | $10,000 | $2,750 | 10 years |
| North field club | n/a | $2,250 | 10 years |
| Loge box (4 seats) | $150,000 | $16,000 | 5 years |
