Troy Dannen: Nebraska's Memorial Stadium renovations will see 'timing and sequencing' changes from initial plans

A change in leadership has led to a change in renovation plans for Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium. New Nebraska Athletics Director Troy Dannen met with a small group of reporters on Thursday, including HuskerOnline‘s Sean Callahan.

According to Callahan, the $450 million Memorial Stadium renovation project will initially focus on East and West Stadiums, instead of South Stadium. Under the initial plan, South Stadium was set to be completely demolished as soon as the end of the 2024 season.

“The project remains on track,” Dannen said, according to Callahan. “However, the timing and the sequencing is going to be different than I think might have been projected earlier. Going forward, we’re going to really focus the architects on East and West Stadium. The rationale for that quite simply is East and West (Stadium) has the potential to monetize itself.

“The landscape of what’s going on right now, the ability to generate money, I’m going to have a pretty big spot on my budget for new money that needs to be generated. I think there was speculation that the South was coming down at the end of the ’24 season. That is not happening.”

Former Nebraska AD Trev Alberts initially announced the renovation project, while former Nebraska President Ted Carter was also heavily involved.

Callahan reports that the South Stadium project will still take place at some point, while the East and West Stadium renovations will start after the 2025 season.

He added that “the plan is to have chair-back seating in the East and West stadiums and tie each seat to a licensing fee. The new premium East and West chair-backed seats would have access to several new in-stadium amenities.”

With the changes, Nebraska’s grandfathering ticket system will also reset. As things stand, a large chunk of Nebraska season ticket holders are grandfathered in to their original donation fee.

“If the East and West project is going to generate money, it’s going to generate it from premium seat licenses for the privilege of accessing those seats, and the amenities that will go with those seats that are going to be different, new, and improved,” Dannen said. “There will be a new price tag on every seat. If that is going to happen, it has to.

“If you ever have a reseat, you have to have at least a year’s notice for your fans. In a perfect world, we’d be looking at something post-’25 into ’26 before really anything tangible inside East and West can happen.”

While the South Stadium renovation project will eventually move forward, it could be different than what was originally planned.

Dannen told reporters that there’s no guarantee that the entire South Stadium will be torn down.

“What I have not gotten into yet is understanding does South have to come down to rebuild South?” Dannen said. “Does it have to come down all at once? Can it come down in phases? Is there another model of that if we have an extended period of time that the whole thing doesn’t come down, but pieces of it do, and we build around it, and we never really harm the capacity?”

The one thing that does appear set to happen soon is a new videoboard and improved WiFi.

“I do plan to go to the board to get a south end video board before the ’25 season,” Dannen said. “The north board’s old. It’s beyond its useful life. It’s still working but given where the seats are and everything else, it feels like the board needs to be in the south. Then, when we eventually build, we can build around it, or we can take it down, relocate it, and put it back in. That’s another big number that we’ve got to figure out whether it can happen or not. I hope when we start ’25, we’ll have a big board down there.”