The Mississippi legislature, last year, commissioned Cooke, Douglass, Farr, Lemons, Ltd. to do a Memorial Stadium study. This investigator obtained a copy of that document. The cost of the needed improvements to Memorial Stadium to comply with current college and professional standards is estimated to be $32,464,200.00.
Of particular interest in this investigation was Option 3 of the proposed hypothesis.
Option 3 -- ?An alternative to minor or major alterations and renovations to Mississippi Memorial Stadium is the construction of a new stadium facility on an undetermined site in the Jackson, MS metropolitan area to serve the needs of Jackson State University. The basis for this design is a facility which will initially seat approximately 30,000 spectators, but expand to 50,000 spectators in 10,000 seat increments. This facility would initially require 10,000 parking spaces with ultimate expansion to 17,000 spaces. Site requirements would be in the range of 190 to 210 acres.
?The facility would include a new playing field; stadium lighting; grandstands; press box; public facilities; retail sales facilities; team and office facilities; scoreboard systems and complete site development for Phase 1 construction. The stadium design shown herein for Phase 1 has a total seating capacity of 30,824, including 2,131 club level seats, 384 suite seats (16 suites), 150 press level seats, 585 handicapped and companion seats, plus 27,574 general grandstand seats.
?Total costs for Option 3 are estimated to be $59,532,800, of which $41,620,700 is a stadium construction cost, $12,500,000 is site development costs (exclusive of land and site utilities costs) and $5,412,000 is soft costs. The stadium construction costs translates to a per seat cost of $1,350.?
