Scooting Along

March 23, 2005

Snow fell last night in Iowa City and while it might have caused a delay in the start of the Iowa softball team’s 2005 home schedule, it probably didn’t dampen the enthusiasm at Kinnick Stadium.

Work on the $89 million renovation of Iowa’s historic football venue continues on time and on budget as noted earlier this week by UI Senior Associate Athletics Director Jane Meyer, who is spearheading day-to-day management of the project for Bob Bowlsby, Iowa’s director of athletics.

Meyer said Tuesday of this week that significant progress has been made on the ground floor of the stadium’s new south grandstand. There, workers are quickly building walls for the variety of rooms that will fill that space…places like Iowa’s new team game-day lockerroom, the lockerroom for the visiting team — the pink paint is on order, by the way — the lockerroom for the game officials, and the operations room for the guys in charge of what will be broadcast on the two new videowalls that are part of the stadium’s new scoreboard system.

A handful of new pictures of the progress have been added to photo gallery at kinnickrenovation.com. Check ’em out when you have a chance.

And, remember, if you were wondering, there will be no spring football game this April. UI Coach Kirk Ferentz noted in his meeting with the media on Tuesday that he’s hoping to open a practice or two up to the public next August if the facility can be deemed secure and safe enough to accommodate a crowd of interested fans of the Hawkeyes that could easily approach 20,000.