{"id":158582,"date":"2025-06-25T23:41:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T23:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/158582\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T23:41:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T23:41:17","slug":"renovation-of-the-swamp-would-result-in-seat-capacity-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/158582\/","title":{"rendered":"Renovation of The Swamp would result in seat capacity reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida athletics director\u00a0Scott Stricklin, speaking on the\u00a0Gator Nation Football Podcast<\/a>\u00a0this week, said the reduction of seating capacity at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium during any renovation probably is unavoidable. That\u2019s because UF would need to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have like six or seven goals for the renovation of The Swamp, which is 95 years old this year, the original part of that,\u201d Stricklin said in his interview with Allen Williams and James Di Virgilio. \u201cSo people ask, \u2018Why do we need to do anything?\u2019 There\u2019s about $500 million in deferred maintenance alone in this stadium. So if you want to have that go to a safe environment that makes us all proud, we need to invest in it. And that\u2019s all we\u2019re doing; we\u2019re re-investing in something that I think every Gator fan really holds dear. One of our stated goals is to minimize the impact of seat count loss.<\/p>\n

And the minute we start addressing deferred maintenance, we\u2019re going to trigger federal code related to the Americans with Disabilities Act and that right there reduces the seat capacity by thousands. Adding ADA seats, widening aisles\u2014and so that\u2019s if we add no chair backs anywhere in the stadium. That\u2019s just a reality that we\u2019re dealing with. That\u2019s not something I dreamed up. We can sit there and just not touch it and let it fall into disrepair or we can finally address it and try to do something in a thoughtful manner that makes The Swamp stay The Swamp and try to minimize that impact as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, the stadium has a seating capacity of 88,548. In December of 2023, the University Athletic Association announced the hiring of the architect firm Crawford Architects to formally begin developing renovation, construction, and phasing options for The Swamp. The firm has had prior jobs updating old and iconic venues including Fenway Park.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Stricklin, who this week called the renovation \u201cthe most ambitious project in the history of college athletics\u201d in his Gator Nation Football Podcast<\/a> interview, also talked about a timeline for the project and where things stand today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in design\/development phase. There\u2019s three phases when you\u2019re in design,\u201d Stricklin said on the show. \u201cThis is the second phase. We\u2019ll wrap this up sometime in the fall. At that point we\u2019ll have a really good sense on budget. We\u2019ll have a really good sense on what we\u2019ll actually do. And once we come up with a financing plan we\u2019ll be ready to start sharing that with Gator Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read more about his interview HERE<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida athletics director\u00a0Scott Stricklin, speaking on the\u00a0Gator Nation Football Podcast\u00a0this week, said the reduction of seating capacity at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2391,7,49,48,1788],"class_list":{"0":"post-158582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-florida-gators-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-regwall"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114746653667626019","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}