Athletics: UL Unveils New Facility + photo gallery

Tim Buckley, Daily Advertiser, March 22, 2012

Click here for the photo gallery of the master plan presentation.

University of Louisiana at Lafayette athletic director Scott Farmer called it a "blueprint for success."

The school’s athletic facilities master plan, estimated to cost nearly $115 million, was revealed Thursday.

The full plan, to be funded largely by a capital campaign, calls for major facility renovations and construction in three priority-level tiers.

That includes almost $70 million in upgrades to the university’s 40-plus-year-old Cajun Field football stadium, including multi-phase expansion from 31,000 seats to 50,000 with room — though not in the immediate plan — to conceivably get to 65,000 seats.

First-tier projects expected to get under way this summer include 5,900 new end-zone seats at Cajun Field; a two-story, 71,000-square-foot athletics practice facility used largely by the Ragin’ Cajuns football team for coaches’ offices, meeting rooms and an expanded weight room; and soccer/track facility improvements.

The master plan’s second tier calls for $57.5 million in other major renovations to Cajun Field, and $9.7 million in improvements to the UL baseball team’s M.L. "Tigue" Moore Field, both on a roughly five-year timetable.

Other planned projects include a new men’s and women’s basketball facility, tennis- enter enhancements and improvements at the Earl K. Long Gymnasium currently used by the women’s basketball and volleyball teams.

Members of the public can review the plan from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. today at the Leon Moncla Indoor Practice Facility.