CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – At Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting The Finance, Planning and Facilities committee approved a higher education bond issue not to exceed $38 million.
If approved by the board of trustees, the sale of bonds will fund CCU’s expansion of Brooks Stadium as required by the University’s athletic affiliation with the Sun Belt Conference, effective July 1, 2016.
The expansion will increase the seating capacity at Brooks Stadium to meet NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision requirements.
“Everything else is moving very smoothly. I think The Sun Belt has been very gracious at incorporating us into league meetings and all their procedural items even though we’re still a few months away from being officially in the league on July 1,” said Matt Hogue with CCU Athletics.
At Thursday’s meeting board members did express concern about the $38 million price tag and wanted to make sure it didn’t create tuition increases. The board wanted the bond committee to ensure the most cost-effective ways to complete the expansion.
Some ideas thrown around included private funding and ticket incentive packages as a way to off-set cost.
The approved motion will now go to the full board Friday for consideration. The next steps will be for the bond committee to go to Columbia next week to meet with state agencies for the final project approval. Once that happens they can begin bids for contractors and have a more firm cost for the project.
The committee says it hopes to have this completed by April.