KANSAS DAVID BOOTH MEMORIAL STADIUM - 2022

UPDATE:  10.7.2022

KU HAS HIRED HNTB AND GOULD EVANS ARCHITECTS TO REDESIGN THE STADIUM.

We are good with this selection, both are good firms with outstanding track records with venue design.  

NOTE:  We appreciate all the feedback we have received and are currently creating drawings that show the south end with less seating blocking views of the hill!!

DAVID BOOTH KANSAS MEMORIAL STADIUM

The Facts:

The University of Kansas has been living on borrowed time with the state of its football program.  We all know that basketball is King at KU, we all also know that football drives the past, present, and future of college athletics and its ability to provide a top tier university with the prestige and financial stability to continue and expand the prestige that KU has earned in its 150+ years.  The following design images are based on helping start a dialogue about the need for, the attributes of, and the direction for one of the most significant elements of the modern American college campus experience.

The Design Intent and impetus:

Impetus:

KU's David Booth Memorial Stadium is currently but a shell of what a true modern college sports football stadium should be.  With one of the most iconic campus settings in all of college sports, the stadium has undergone very little to upgrade the fan experience, let alone the team experience in the past many decades.  Don't misunderstand, the stadium is a great place to watch a football game and to look at the beauty of Mount Oread in the background.... but that is about it.  The team has left little to cheer for or even attend the games in over a decade.  Love him or hate him, Coach Mark Mangino was the last KU coach to have KU in the national football conversation....in a good way! 

Today there is new hope, a coach that is a proven winner.  Don't discount Coach Leipold's background, you DON'T win 6 national championships in 8 years if you don't know what you are doing!  You don't turn around a team like Buffalo... (a school KU would have played to a tie 6 or 7 years ago I’m sure) if you don't know how to turn a program around!

How did Kansas corral such an up and coming, while also unbelievably successful new coach, by bringing it back to the home state.  The hiring of KU alum and rising Tulane and Northwestern assistant athletic director Travis Goff has someone in the house that not only bleeds Crimson and Blue like the rest of us, but he has a proven record and high-level praise from around the college athletic circles as a perfect hire for his alma mater.  He's a Kansas kid, Dodge City, out west where you often must look hard to find a KU fan.

Design Intent:

We offer you the following product for a fully renovated football stadium that will help secure KU's place in the beauty pageant brewing behind the scenes at the top football conferences.... don’t forget, Football is KING...but in the world of college sports, there is a place for a Blue Blood basketball school that takes football just as serious!

KU Memorial Stadium. The Booth as it currently stands is old, not upgraded enough for the fans or teams, great to go to for a lazy Saturday afternoon to watch your team get beat and look at the scenery and enjoy the pageantry of college football in a half full stadium.

We can go on about the issues with Memorial Stadium but let’s put it in the context of not what's bad, as much as how do we add the things that will make this a place for KU Football that can rival KU basketball and Allen Field House.  Let's start there!

Allen FH, not a bad seat in terms of watching the game or destroying the eardrums of the visiting teams, fans, and world sound records!  Total 360 enclosure with a barn roof that kicks the sound back directly onto the floor making it the Guinness Book of World Record holder for loudest indoor stadium/arena.  

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/loudest-crowd-roar-at-a-sports-stadium-(indoors)

What nearby football stadium also is in the Guinness Book of World Records for Loudest Outdoor Stadium?...you might have guessed, nearby Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City home of the Kansas City Chiefs!

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/loudest-crowd-roar-at-a-sports-stadium

You surely must know that many Chief's fans are KU fans, and many KU fans are Chief's fans, yup, got the fans if you can only put a winning team on the field, right?  No so fast my friends.  That is only half of the equation...remember Allen FH, yes, the team is always good, but it's the setup and intimidation factor of the home court that scares the hell out of the visiting team...same for the Chiefs.

Arrowhead stadium is a multi-tiered stadium of some 80,000 or so spectators, we can't expect 80K to Lawrence just yet, but how does up to 62,000 sound!  The following stadium description is based on Allen Field House and Arrowhead Stadium plus bits and pieces of some of the greatest sports gathering places on earth with many of the latest strategies for providing a game day experience that helps the home team WIN and the party on MASS St. rage on for hours...or for us older folks...makes our ears ring all night long like a game at AFH.

Here, we, go! 

Enclose the south end as much as possible without blocking the view of the hill.  .  Remove the last couple of sections of the east and west stands on the south end, push the field as close as safety allows to the north stands...OH, don't forget DROP THE FIELD!  Yes, we must, it will improve site lines, and give the sense of enclosure that a gladiator sport needs!  This is the first step in keeping the sound on the ground, it will go there and stay in the hole.  After we remove the south sections, we remove of the upper section on the east side.   We add an identical bowl that exists in the north end and run it to the east side to the south end...get rid of that fan zone or whatever in the world that is in the bowl area, no more makeshift gimmicks for a big-time program, it's football first and only, no kid zones in the bowl!  Keep that underneath  or around the stadium and away from the gladiator’s surface :)

A full ring of seating on the bottom level  with a large portal for the home team to run directly from the football complex to the field, much the same as the Basketball team does from the locker room to the court with the fans being roped off for high fives and a few close moments with their Jayhawk favorite players just before they take the field.  Jazz this run to teh field by the team up, make this a dynamic visual inside the tunnel and broadcast it on the video boards in the stadium.  Of course, we create new visitors’ lockers...barely nice enough for them to use, but we do give them a nice narrow winding passageway to the field for single file or at best two abreast entry to the field...single file losers, single file!  

  We expand the press boxes and include more donor suites as we will need them.  Nothing changes for these season ticket holders in terms of location.  Then we ring the stadium with new and renovated concourse levels that have all the modern amenities that stadiums must have. The ring at the top of the existing bowl would provide an ideal location suites for the people that love KU and want to give just a bit more than their heart and soul to KU. 

On top of the concourse/suite level is the upper ring of seating.  Not an entire ring, but sections that make for enclosure of the stadium and give levels for fan noise to be trapped within the stadium. The premise of the entire design is trapping the sound, the upper ring is the second most important feature to doing that besides enclosing the south end.  Yes, the dropping of the field helps and that is probably in 3rd place tie with the next feature, the canopy roof!  Roof features are not just for shielding fans from the sun and slightly wetter elements, but if done right, helps reflect the sound back onto the field. 

We have trapped the noise of the stadium temporarily, but we must have seating on the south end down low.  KU is currently experimenting with upgraded seating experiences for this area and many Universities are making one end of the stadium into these enhanced game day experiences.  

Back to the upper-level ring, North and South ends get Jayhawk Jumbo-trons, you just gotta see the replay!  There would also be a party deck on the south end with a smaller version on the north.  On the south party deck we cut the seating back to account for the jumbo-Tron of course, but with the desire to preserve as much of the view of the hill and campus beyond.

Lots of activities on the party deck for everyone with an open-air deck on the Hill side of the stadium for campus viewing as well.

OK, of course there will be some that like these ideas, some that can make suggestions to improve the ideas and the many haters that abound whenever you put something out in these days of anonymous hate.  But that is ok, as we just want to get the conversation started, so we can get the party started!

I will throw out the first thought, how about a huge, 30’ tall KU Jayhawk on the top of the north Jumbo-tron like an Olympic torch!  Yeah!  Beat that!!

OK, I like the challenge I just laid out, here is another idea, let's add a jumbo-tron on the south end exterior of the stadium so pregame can watch the inside happenings of the stadium, advertisers can use this to help KU pay for the stadium with ads or ads promoting KU and of course pumping the faithful up for the game, then when the stadium starts selling out, we bring back the old days of sitting on the hill watching the game and helping cheer on the Jayhawks, almost in person!  Maybe even a movie night or two on the hill or an occasional outdoor classroom.  Graduation march down the hill showing the graduates faces as they enter under the stadium just before they walk out of the tunnel onto the stadium surface.

((See the stadium design below.  Remember, we aren't finished, we just feel we need to get people talking and see the feedback and ideas that others have.  Be sure to select the,    + SEE MORE  ,  link below each block of images.  Also, click on an image to expand it.))

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK, GO KU!

The first image you see below is an overlay of the existing stadium and the concept stadium.  The red areas are existing stadium elements that will need to be demolished to make the concept work.  The thought is that the stadium construction will take a number of years and we are trying to avoid having to use an off site location for KU home games during construction.  In the first phase, the field would be dropped and moved to the north end 10 yards or so, at the same time the demolition of the red shaded areas can take place.  After that, the design and construction teams would best select the elements to produce in a phased development approach.