Trev Alberts - Proposed Memorial Stadium Renovation Plans Press Conference

Opening Statement
“Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here. We’ve got quite a few folks here, members of our staff and this is a big day and an exciting day for all of us. First, I do want to point out that perhaps in a perfect world, the Thursday before the Michigan game, maybe we wouldn’t be doing this right now. But I hope you understand that relative to what the Board of Regents policies are and how agendas work, one week prior to October 5, the agendas are made public. So we thought it might make some sense to spend some time with you and allow you to ask some questions and details. I just kind of want to go back from the beginning. I think it was about four or five months into my tenure – it was January of 2022 - we sent out a survey. It was really important to me, obviously. We’ve talked a lot about our fanbase and about the importance of our fans to the athletic department. We sent out a survey that 22,000 people responded to, which in working with some of our partners, was really remarkable. They’d done a lot of these types of things and to get that level of response was, first of all, awesome, but it provided us with an awful lot of information. I think about three or four months after we did that survey, we released the results that all of you had and our fans. What I want you to know is that as we’ve gone through this process and the next year and a half, we created an executive team of men and women, leaders across our state to truly dive into a holistic vision of Memorial Stadium. Obviously, we’re celebrating 100 years of an iconic stadium. The question is, what does the next 25, 50, 100 years look like of Memorial Stadium? I want to point out – and obviously, these are all-encompassing, there’s a lot of detail behind these – every piece of our thinking, both during the year and the process with our leadership team, as well as how we move forward, whether it’s how we spend construction or contingency dollars, these three priorities are going to drive all of our thinking. These are directly a result of what our fans responded. Number one is create a facility that enhances the evolving fan experience. What fans expect in 2023 is perhaps slightly different than what it was 100 years ago. Number two, we need to modernize Memorial Stadium to ensure infrastructure for the next century. It’s really really important. The history that has happened in our stadium is remarkable. We need to make sure that while we’re here, we’re working on infrastructure to ensure that it’s in place for the next 100 years. Finally, and this is really important to us, we want to create a facility that is equitable and affordable access to all of our fans. We learned a lot in that survey. And we learned that some of our fans across our state viewed that experiencing Husker football was, at some levels, beyond their financial capability. And so, we need to make sure that we have got a stadium that is accessible. I think I mentioned publicly that as a result of this process that we found out, that between seat-licensing fees and ticket costs, we’re the fifth-most expensive ticket in college football. We literally went through every seat at Memorial Stadium. We know the revenue that is attached to every single seat within Memorial Stadium, so that’s really important. I want to thank our executive team and our committee for their hard work. It’s been a year and a half. We’ve met at least monthly, and sometimes more than monthly. I also want to thank our staff in Husker Athletics. As you can imagine, this has taken a lot of time and effort on my part, so having the type of team that we have, that can fulfill the responsibilities and help run the department – that’s been really meaningful to me. You probably know most of this, but this is a $450 million project. One of the things that was really important to me was that we had one chance to do this. If we’re going to do this right, we’re going to do it entirely. So, a holistic vision, not just a South Stadium vision, not just East or West, but important for me and so I think what you’ll see on that second easel there is – and these are rendering. Obviously, as we move forward, there can be slight alterations. But it’s really important to us that we had a 360° concourse. We really need to have our entire stadium connected. And the benefit here is that we can actually have a 270° connection on the second level. Obviously, South Stadium is a significant focus of what we’re going to do here, but every part of the stadium, East and West and North, will also be impacted for our fan experience. We really view the South Stadium as an opportunity to really rethink things. I also want to point out that none of this, as you look at the next easel, none of what we’re thinking relative to Memorial Stadium modernization would be possible if we didn’t have the Go Big Project come online. So we have 315,000 square feet of the Go Big Project, and again, I always want to thank our donors for making that happen. But as a result of that programming leaving West Stadium and North Stadium, that’s what really allowed us to rethink ‘how do we activate Memorial Stadium as more than just seven Saturdays a fall?’ What you’re seeing across the country over a 100 years as campus kind of goes into the athletics footprint. You’re seeing and looking at ways to activate Memorial Stadium more than seven Saturdays in the fall, and so you’ll see and there will be a lot more detail as we work through this. Obviously, this is part of the approval process. We don’t have approval yet from the Board of Regents, and that’s what we’re seeking on October 5th, but we really look at this as an opportunity to do a number of things. Number one is to really integrate academic programming. So, we did three things as an executive team. Number one, we went out to Wisconsin. Grateful for our partners out there. They had done an endzone stadium. We thought we could learn some stuff there. We went to Notre Dame, who had done a lot of academic programming within their stadium. And then finally we went and visited the Cubs, and we spent some time with the Ricketts family and the Cubs’ leadership to see how they took an iconic brand, modernized it, found new revenue streams and created an incredible fan experience for all their fans. So, we envisioned and we worked with Kathy Ankerson, the senior vice chancellor of academic affairs on our campus, and she worked with all the deans, and we identified 120,000 square feet on the east side that’s gonna be available for academic programming. Right now, I think they’ve identified about 60,000 square feet of need, so there will be some flex space for them. This won’t replace classrooms, but it may be some experiential learning type opportunities for students and some growth there. South stadium, really passionate about this, and this is really driven by a lot of our donors. A significant desire and interest to really embrace our students. It’s really, really important. Our students are gonna be our donors. They’re our alumni. They’re our future business leaders, and I think the athletic department can do a better job of making the student experience, as well as the band, a much more integral part of what our gameday environment looks and feels like, so a real focus there. We look at community engagement, and some of this is still you know sort of yet to be determined, and one of the things that I think we can do a much better job, and I learned this in my prior experience in Omaha, is the importance of using assets that you currently have to impact the greater good, so how can we use some of our assets and facilities and maybe have a broader impact than just our student athletes. Maybe it’s our undergraduate population, community, local high schools, something that is a little bit undefined as well as some of it, but it will be really important that we have that opportunity. Then obviously, on the north side, that's still the home of Husker Athletics and some evolving opportunities within the medical space. I think you all have recently probably recognized or heard that we have partnered with UNMC and Nebraska Medicine and really passionate about making sure that our student athletes have the highest level of medical care possible, so that’s sort of the vision. It’s $450 million dollars. $225 million, we hope to raise privately. The athletic department will participate in $100 million dollars. So we have about 50 million dollars that’s at the University of Nebraska Foundation in surplus funds, essentially donor funds, and actually those are the dollars that were going to use first. So, part of the approval from the Board is actually three different components. One of which is about a $45 million dollar initial infrastructure package, which will allow us to get started immediately, and nothing that maybe the average fan is even going to see. It’s back of house mechanical stuff that we need to kind of put in place before major construction happens. We will then seek to use the central lending program through Varner Hall and borrow another $50 million dollars just for a little context. We did borrow $50 million dollars from the Go Big Project. Through the support of our fans and others, we have an aggressive payment plan so that debt expired at the end of this fiscal year. So we will not start another project and add debt to the athletic department until our previous debt has been extinguished. Really important there. The other $125 million dollars we are working through several sources to figure out how - in a true private-public partnership - we can impact so we will be examining those areas as well. Finally before we do questions just general timelines as I mentioned earlier, the initial infrastructure package, we can get started immediately given approval and hopeful approval on the 5th. Then ultimately the major construction - and quite frankly the major construction that’s going to be a real challenge - is directly after the ‘24 season, roughly January of ‘25. We will demolish South Stadium and rebuild it. Obviously the hope is to have one season of disruption so the goal by August of ‘26 that South Stadium is rebuilt in a way that’s indicative of the rest of the stadium, but we need to be honest with ourselves. We live in Lincoln, Nebraska and it’s very hard to predict the weather and also we’ve had some challenges in construction as you all know relative to supply-chain issues and those types of things so I’ll also just say that we’re going to dive into additional details and we have one opportunity to do this. We are going to rethink everything about Memorial Stadium and we are going to be willing to do the tough stuff. I would just ask our fans to give us a little grace. It is physically not possible to be responsive to 22,000 of our fans on a survey to modernize our stadium in a way that doesn’t cause some pain and disruption for our fans so I would just ask them to be patient with us and try to focus on what the future looks like. We need to just be honest about the reality that this is going to disrupt a lot of people. We have looked at a lot of ways to try to limit that disruption but also we are playing football games so you have a whole football season that you can’t engage in construction so we’re excited about it. Obviously there have been a lot of changes in college athletics. What started out for me is a very simple modernization plan based on amenities relative to fans expectation has very quickly changed into a business strategy for the next 25 to 50 years. We are very proud in this athletic department that we do not receive state taxpayer dollars or student fees to fund our annual operations. The other thing we’re very proud of through the success of Memorial Stadium and our fanbase, we have a long history of investing in women’s athletics, 92,000 people don’t show up in Memorial Stadium to support volleyball if there wasn’t a previous history under previous leadership of having a broad base successful athletic department. For us, this vision is about ensuring we have those revenues, find new creative entrepreneurial revenue streams that for the next 25 or 50 years, ensures that we do not become a burden on our campus, taxpayers and student fees and we can continue to invest in our women’s athletics program so that we can be as competitive as we have been for the next 10 to 15 years. For that, I will stop rambling and allow whatever questions you might have.”

On why they decided to demolish south stadium instead of renovate it
“Well, I think the initial assessment was not having it connected to East and West and trying to create the concourse and the connection, and at some point it becomes more feasible and economically viable to start over. I know our partners looked hard at that renovation. Can we find a way to just renovate it within so we don’t disrupt some of our fans? But, the decision was made, and again, part of what we want to do is we really want to connect East and West all the way around the up-high. So you’re really creating a true bowl. There’s a competitive component to this as well. You think about the band down in South and all the students – our goal is, we want this to be the best place to watch a college football game. There’s more than just the stadium itself, there’s work to do outside the stadium. But at the end of the day for me, what do we do to make this the greatest environment? That also allows you, then, to think about some different diversification and different types of seating. Right now, we have club seats and we have suites. What we’ve seen and learned is that there’s lots of different ideas and options. There’s ledge seating, there’s loge boxes, there’s some diversity in how we look at that. But more importantly, as I mentioned, equitable and affordable. We have got to solve our ADA problem in Memorial Stadium. It has not been addressed and it isn’t right. So, part of this strategy is, again, to deal with those sensitive areas that have not been addressed – and by starting over in South Stadium, ADA is a very significant component of that. So what we’d love to do, and I want to be very careful here, number one, we don’t have approval. We’re confident. Number two, as we get into the details, some of the manifest and all that might look different. The goal is, we’d like to have chair backs, if possible, East and West and South. North Stadium is going to be a challenge and I don’t think we can get chair backs in North Stadium because of the tread depth. We don’t believe by code, we’d be allowed to get that done. But that would give us some opportunity to view those seats differently. Our objective and goal is to have eight thousand seats that don’t require any seat-licensing fee. We need to find a way to make it more intuitive for our fans at various levels and to have amenities that match what that investment looks like.”

On a stadium reseat and grandfathering of ticket prices
“It’s a great question, Sean (Callahan). We’re going to have the courage to address all of it. There are going to be strong opinions on all of this. At the end of the day, I think what we’re charged with – I’ve always loved assembling people a lot smarter than I am to help hold us accountable. This is not Trev or the athletic department unilaterally making these decisions. We’re going to have good, smart men and women, business leaders, who are going to help us think through this. The only way to create some of that equity is to examine some of that. There’s no definitive answers yet on what we plan to do. But absolutely, we intend to take a hard look at the grandfather clause and how that impacts the rest of our fans. The reality is, is if you look at putting in the modern amenities that our fans would like, the physical structure of Memorial Stadium remains the same, but you’re going to have a 10-12% reduction in capacity just based on widening aisles, putting handrails, doing the things from ADA and other things that I think a stadium in 2023 really demands.”

On where he thinks the capacity will end
“I don’t want to say a number that I get held accountable to. I’ve learned that. I would envision it’s going to be in the mid-70,000 range. Plus or minus, somewhere in there. I can also tell you that this is not an effort to try and decrease supply, increase demand and use a decrease in supply to increase ticket prices to force new revenue. That’s not what this vision is about. This vision is about the amenities. Those are the ones that ultimately drive that 10-12% reduction.”

On if the reduction only impacts the 2025 season
“That’s the goal, Mitch (Sherman). The goal is by August of 2026 – the reason why I say it’s a goal is, has anybody else built a house in their life? Remember when you were told it’s going to be available in October and then you move in in May? So, it’s the same issue here. Obviously, we have the best and the brightest that are working on this, and the goal is the Summer of 2026, we’re ready to go, at least in the seating. Maybe there’s some back-of-house stuff in South not done, but I think there’s some creative ways. I just don’t want to create an expectation of our fans that we can’t deliver on. I am personally, in my mind, preparing myself for two seasons. I am going to have to ask our staff to think that way, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is one year.”

On what the department will think of creatively to address concerns with 2025 seating
“That’s what some of the people in the back of the room’s job is going to be. They’re much more creative and smarter than I am. If it got done prior to the 2026 season, that’s back to that 10-12% reduction overall that would be contemplated. Again, these are just broad numbers, but I think it helps perspective. Let’s say there’s 22,500 people that are seated in South Stadium. When it’s done, if you have ADA and wider and you have chair backs, we’re going to get 18,000 people back in. So, the physical structure is the same, but based on the modernization and the comfort levels that our fans desire, there’s no alternative other than that reduction.”

On the plan for the current student section
“We don’t have that plan right now. This is part of the disruption and our team has started thinking about what we could do that while it is not going to placate everybody, let’s do this in the short term but I don’t want to get into that yet because first of all we don’t have approval and second of all we don’t have that detailed thinking but I assure you we will do what we can to make whole and make right our students and those affected in South Stadium. There will be those affected in all parts of the Stadium. This is not just a South Stadium issue. The reality is almost everyone could be impacted.”

On luxury suites being added
“Not sure, we are looking at additional suites in South Stadium. I mentioned some of the more diversity and some of the trends are, and again I don’t want to say we’re doing this, these are the things we’re thinking about. Some of the trends nationally are premium seating closer to the field. Again, your mind can wander quickly, a training table that exists today with a kitchen that we won’t need anymore as it goes over to ‘Go Big’. Do we use that to rethink a new club lounge that has field level access? I’m not sure, but these are the types of things that ‘Go Big’ is presenting to us now. We are going to look at, there’s also a trend of suites that aren’t as big. A lot of our suite holders have said it’s hard to find 28 people and get them to go to every game. What if we had the same amenities in a smaller suite? So we are going to look at diversifying some of these premium areas that meet market demand. We do think there’s market demand. We have a waiting list in our suites. We do have a waiting list in some of the premium areas. This is not a vision and a strategy for those premium spaces. It’s adding those premium spaces creates additional revenue streams that will help us offset some of the debt we need to take out and to pay for some of the improvements for the rest of the stadium.”

On fan comfort in South Stadium
“We’re sorry. I’m not sure what else to say. Our son, when he was younger, went to a game in South Stadium and he still said that he has PTSD from that experience. He’s now 25. To me, I watch our fans. So much of this to me is things like whether they’re escalators or additional elevators, we need to make it more intuitive and easier for Husker fans to support their team. I look at the effort that some of our fans put in to get here every Saturday and it is really remarkable and we can never take that for granted. I don’t know how to respond to that Adam other than to say how incredibly grateful that we are for sticking with us. We know that there is an issue there. How great would it be if people coming from the Haymarket can walk in to South Stadium and if they sit in North Stadium, they have a concourse that connects. There’s just some basic fundamental things. I think there’s some security things when we move forward that will be important here as we try to access. I just hope the basic message is across the board that we are going to try to dive into every possible detail. I also want to say that we are not going to be perfect but there will be mistakes, there will never be a coordinated effort to alienate any of our fans.”

On if they plan on reducing the number of student tickets sold
“That’s not the effort. Frankly, I don’t know where that’s going. We have not had that type of conversation. I will tell you that very early on, we have pressure tested this. We wouldn’t have announced this if we didn’t think we had support in the private community. A very consistent message from our donors was how important to them embracing the student experience at Memorial Stadium was. I mentioned Kathy Ankerson and part of what we really want to think about is as prospective students and undergraduate and helping in enrollment, how do we activate athletic department resources to help our campus? As students and their families are walking across campus, what if they ended up at Memorial Stadium and this is your home as a student. Those are the things we want to do. We want to embrace the band. We want their experience to be as good as our student-athletes’ experience, quite frankly. We have not, in my personal opinion, we have not raised the bar in that area.”

On the seat backs
“There’s been a lot of technology around it, you think back even 20 years ago if you put a chair back in, you had two options. There’s been a lot of engineering and progress and innovation around chair backs and so part of that challenge will be East Balcony, what we can’t do, so here’s part of it, the Stadium that’s East and West was built 100 years ago. The architecture and the engineering around that doesn’t allow us, unless we tore it all out and repoured all the concrete, we’re not going to be able to change those types of things. There’s a load that it can handle. So you are going to have to be creative on what types of chair backs. We would make it as comfortable as possible but you are going to get in there what you can get in there based on what the East and West sides can handle from a load perspective on an engineering perspective and what physically is allowed based on tread depth. The amount of money it would cost to basically rake the whole east and west and start over would be cost prohibitive.”

On the competitive aspect of moving the student section
“Well I remember in 1993, Glen Mason, when he was the Kansas coach trying to stop the game, telling officials that he can’t hear. ‘You need to get the fans to be a little more quiet.’ Wouldn’t that be wonderful again? So we have kind of gone away from that in college football, obviously with the silent count and all those types of things. Again, I just think that so much of the stadium experience from my perspective, whether it’s a football stadium or a hockey arena – the students drive the energy. Why wouldn’t we embrace our students to drive the energy in the stadium? You’re not going to want to put premium seats right below the band and the students, right? So you have to think through how you do it in a way that they can be students and enjoy themselves. We need to meet our fans where they are. If we have fans that say ‘I want my car valeted,’ we need to meet our fans where they are. So we’ll through all that kind of stuff.”

On if any of this affects the 2024 season
“No. The goal is to not have any disruption for the 2024 season. Again, Mitch (Sherman), I’ve learned – please give me a little grace here. One of the challenges in a process like this is we don’t know. We don’t know what’s under South Stadium. We don’t know what we could find. I know when they built Go Big, this was prior to my arrival, I think there was some soil, there was things you don’t know when you start. The hardest part is really, clearly communicating ‘this, this and this will happen. Here’s the details,’ because as we dive into this, one thing I think we do feel good about, and I give a lot of credit to previous leadership here; a lot of the mechanical things you’re worried about because this is a 100-year-old stadium, do we have hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff? We don’t think that’s the case. Obviously, there’s upgrades needed, but we think some of the major mechanical stuff that’s part of a stadium like this is actually in pretty good shape. The wifi is not in very good shape. Point of sale is not in very good shape. Numbers of point of sale for our folks. There’s just some basic modernization things that can take place that I think will change the experience. I’ve heard from some fans that they would love to go get a hamburger, maybe get a Pepsi, but they’re not going to leave their seat because they’re afraid they’re going to miss half the first quarter to go get a hamburger. That’s on us. There’s a lot of innovative advances in technology relative to concessions. We’re going to be working with a lot of those types of partners to make that experience. And we can learn from a lot of people. That’s the goal.”

On the norm for Big Ten programs
“We strategically go to each place for a reason. We went to Wisconsin because it had done an end zone project and it had some different types of seating. They had a deck, so that was that. We went to Notre Dame on purpose to look at academic integration. I’m just telling you, there’s campus rec involved there, they have the school of music there and I think anthropology. There’s cafes and Starbucks and when you walk into Notre Dame’s football stadium in the middle of the day, there’s all kinds of students in there. It’s almost like a Student Union. I’m not sure that ours will look exactly the same, but you have this incredible asset, why aren’t we rethinking it? And the Cubs was more about ‘how do you take an iconic brand that’s tired and rethink it?’ And do it while you’re still trying to play. The Cubs have done Wrigleyville, they’ve done things outside the stadium that have looked for additional revenue. They had a very detailed approach to really looking at what the fans want. These are diehard baseball folks. They’re going to come. And this is our fun group – they don’t really care about baseball, they just want to have a good time. You have to meet your fans. I’m not suggesting we’re going to go as far as all of them, but we’ve always found that if we look at what some others have done, we can see some trends. What’s exciting to me is having the stadium activated more than just seven Saturdays a fall. Our state is really proud of our stadium. Every fourth grader in the state of Nebraska tours Memorial Stadium. To see their faces, you know? I think we should expand on that. I think we should get more people involved. I think we should think about other unique inventory that can be a part beyond football. Like Volleyball Day in Nebraska, like Garth Brooks, and those types of things. That’s the thinking.”

On what to expect as a South Stadium ticket holder
“Yeah, it’s a really good question, and obviously, we can’t get ahead of ourselves as this part of the chicken or the egg deal here, right? So, we don’t have a project yet, so we can’t officially sign pledge agreements with donors until you have approval from the Board. You know, the Board’s interested in you know, ‘do you have funding?’ So, this is the first step in a process to move forward, but we’re well aware of how important internal and external communication strategies are going to be. We’ve talked about doing our best to, you know, and we’re working on some strategies. I’m not ready to, you know, to communicate that today, but it would be our hope that every single person in the stadium’s voice will be heard, good, bad or ugly, and I’m prepared for all of it, but part of it will be helping them to understand what the future could look like, and if that’s not the seat today, what’s a different seat look like? So, whether it’s town hall meetings, whether it’s, you know, this is not just a Lincoln thing or Omaha, this is a state of Nebraska and even beyond, so we’re gonna have to be really buttoned up on our communication strategy, and that’ll be on me, and there’ll be times when we fall short of that, and we’ll apologize and work harder.”

On the plan for South Stadium
“Well, I don’t have exact details, but you know, it needs to come down. So, what is the best way for it to come down? I wasn’t here, but I heard they did a similar thing with Harper, Schramm, Smith. Is that, or I'm sorry. Did we just implode dorms that people are living in? I’m sorry. I lived in Abel Hall. That’s all I knew. 903 Abel Hall. But, so we’ll find out from our partners, but I yeah, I would anticipate you know, because part of that is going to be the sooner we can get it down after the season, the quicker we can start the rebuild. So, I don't know if prior to it actually going down, if there’s some things that we can do underneath there in terms of underground. Can we start some things while it’s still up so that when it does come down, we can more quickly go vertical with construction? That’s a good question, but that’s why we, you know, would be working with experts in this area.”

On ways to activate the implosion of South Stadium
“You know, we have lots of people who are really creative. They have lots of ideas in our department, so as my wife tells me sometimes, ‘we can’t use all your ideas Trev.’ But, we’ll, yeah, you know what, we can have a little fun along the way, so we’ll see, you know, but if you’re volunteering to make a donation to be the person that gets to push the button, you know, maybe we can talk, but no, not to downplay the significance and the disruption. I want to be very clear that I understand completely the angst and the frustration that many, some or many of our fans are going to have, and I can only apologize and ask them to be patient with us as we, cause again, we’ve got a 100-year-old stadium that we need to ensure is viable for the next 100 years.”

On the student section in 2025-26
“What do you mean, in terms of? Well you know clearly, when South Stadium is gone, that's going to be a disruption, again, that's why I said, it's not just gonna be folks sitting in South Stadium. The students will be impacted as well. I don’t know to what extent, and that’s why obviously our focus in going to be, ‘let's do everything we possibly can to have this completed and only have one year of disruption,’ but there’s no doubt about it, there is going to be, you know, fewer students, likely, at least for one season that are going to be able to have access to Husker football games, and so again, there’s strategies around that with lottery and other things, and how can we kind of, our team has been thinking about that. But that’s gonna be a reality that all of our students and our fans are going to face.”

Closing Statement
“Thank you for being here. It’ll be a lot more exciting when Coach Rhule comes. He’ll talk to you about Michigan. Thank you guys.”