South Carolina announces renovations to Williams-Brice Stadium

South Carolina announced the next phase in a series of renovations to Williams-Brice Stadium, slated to be completed by the 2022 football season, the second year of the Shane Beamer era.

The renovations include expansion of the west main concourse, new elevators, new ribbon boards throughout Williams-Brice Stadium and the addition of LED stadium lights.

“We have a great home for football, but there are things that can be done to help modernize the stadium to create more excitement and a better fan experience,” South Carolina Athletics Director Ray Tanner said via the release. “We have ambitious goals, and we’re thankful that our Board is supportive of our initiatives so we can get started quickly.  When you consider we just did the largest stadium renovation ever in 2020 and now we are tackling ribbon boards, stadium lights, concourse expansion and new elevators, it’s starting to make a big difference.”

The expansion of the west main concourse of Williams-Brice Stadium is a $2.3M project. The expansion will allow for improvements to concessions, fan movement and restrooms. In addition, a 5,000 square foot patio is being added which will expand the concourse behind the current elevators and west towards Gamecock Park and two 1,000 square foot pads will be added over the switchback ramps to add concourse space and allow for the relocation of existing concession spaces to improve traffic flow.

“This expansion is a great start; we cannot address the issues with servicing our fans without getting this first phase approved. There is certainly more work to be done, but we have a long-term vision and are excited about how this project expands a critical footprint in our stadium,” Executive Associate Athletics Director Steve Eigenbrot said. “We understand that without more square footage, we can’t start to service all the fans in our home stands and now, we’ve got almost 7,000 additional square feet to work with when we come back and make wide spanning improvements to our restrooms and concessions stands.”

The renovations to Williams-Brice Stadium include the additions of two more elevators to the stadium and will cost $2.4 million dollars to complete. The elevators will give access to the 200 and 600 levels of seating as well as the press box.

“When fans are arriving and when they are leaving, we’ve been forced to take two elevators offline so we can move the coaching staffs up and down from the press box,” Executive Associate Athletics Director Chris Rogers said.  “That’s tough timing to take offline two-thirds of your operation, adding this bank of elevators is going to make those high-volume times far more manageable and improve the experience for our fans.”

The renovations are bolstered by the early fundraising success of the Carolina Committed campaign, a philanthropic campaign for the advancement of South Carolina Athletics. The campaign is mean to address the aforementioned improvements of Williams-Brice Stadium, Olympic sport facilities, Women of South Carolina initiatives, Name, Image and Likeness initiatives and Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. The Carolina Committed campaign is aiming to generate $35 million solely through philanthropic donations by the end of 2023.