Several Ole Miss facility projects are being put 'on pause,' including baseball stadium expansion
Earlier this year Ole Miss baseball announced an expansion project for Oxford-University Stadium but on Tuesday athletic director Keith Carter announced those plans were put on the back burner.
In front of a large crowd of Ole Miss fans at the Memphis Botanic Gardens during the second Rebel Road Trip stop of the week Carter said the Oxford-University Stadium expansion and other facility projects are being put “on pause.”
The O-U Stadium project was set to cost around $30 million and add 450 seats, a new club area down the third base side as well as a Champions Plaza to honor the 2022 National Championship team and a permanent home for the Tim Elko ‘Captain’ statue that was unveiled ahead of this past season.
For now there will not be any major construction underway on the Ole Miss campus, at least when it comes to athletic facilities.
“It’s an interesting time in college athletics. A lot of uncertainty around the financial piece of it,” Carter said. “Where we’re going with the (revenue) share and a lot of different things there. So, we’ve pulled back on a lot of our facilities. Kind of put those on the shelf and press pause.
“We know we got to maintain great facilities, I think we have great facilities right now. We got to continue to maintain and renovate and do those type of things. But probably the next couple years you won’t see anything major coming out. …The west side of the football stadium, even the baseball stadium project. We’re going to put that on pause, as well, for now until we figure out where we’re going with all this.”
The revenue share that Carter referenced is the agreed settlement that is waiting approval from a judge. Should the settlement be approved by a judge then Power 5 (or 4) schools will be responsible for 24 percent of $2.8 billion in damages that former and current student-athletes will be owed. The money will reportedly come out of the NCAA’s distributions to schools.
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Vaught-Hemingway Stadium’s west side renovation was part of the initial rollout of Ole Miss’ Champions.Now. campaign that mapped out several major facility upgrades, including work to the outfield at O-U Stadium.
For now the only major project Ole Miss will complete out of the campaign is the new softball stadium.
The new Ole Miss softball complex got underway prior to the 2024 season and continued throughout it. Major work is now underway again after the Rebels completed this past season and the stadium will be completed by the 2025 season, according to Carter.
Part of the $30 million stadium build was rotating the field with home plate now facing northeast, similar to Swayze Field for baseball.
“That’s going to be a great facility and a facility that’s long overdue,” Carter said. “We looked at that facility and what we could do to improve and quickly realized we needed to strike a match, burn it down (and) start over. It’s going to be nice and online in full force next year.”
Other smaller projects will be completed or started in the Gillom Center, Ole Miss soccer complex and other women’s sports facilities, according to Carter.
