Penn State football: Lasch and Holuba Hall practice field renovations up for Board of Trustees approval this week
Penn State football recently completed upgrades to the inside of its main headquarters, the Lasch Building. Now, the university’s Committee on Finance, Business, and Capital Planning and full Board of Trustees appear set to approve a funding plan that would pave the way for the program’s outdoor and indoor practice fields to be renovated.
The Board’s agenda for this Friday’s public meeting in State College offers more details.
“The project scope includes a permanent video board and sound system at the practice fields, play clocks, goal post, and netting at the artificial turf field, and a videoboard, sound system, and filming cameras inside Holuba Hall,” the document says.
The Committee on Finance, Business, and Capital Planning will first discuss the proposal at its 1:15 p.m. meeting on Thursday.
Per the full board agenda, the project could not exceed $7.5 million. Design work would be completed by HOK of Philadelphia, which has helped with numerous jobs across campus. Most projects under $10 million do not need to be approved by the board. This one does, however, because it would be debt-financed.
According to the Penn State office of the physical plant website, bid requests for the work were first posted online in March 2020. Back then, the posting said the project “includes Foundations, Underground Electrical and Data/Communication, Audio System, and specialized sports equipment consisting of scoreboard, play clocks, netting, and goal posts.”
Penn State just completed indoor work at Lasch
Penn State started moving back into the newly-renovated part of the Lasch Building back in August. The $48.3 million project brought numerous changes, updates, and new amenities to the longtime base camp for Lions football.
Per a news release:
“The multi-million dollar project at Penn State includes not just an expanded weight training facility but also “performance enhancement equipment upgrades.” It will also have “The “5th Quarter Program. It is “designed to help student-athletes successfully transition from high school to college, and then from college to the professional ranks through life skills and education program. “Sports medicine upgrades” were included, too.
Back in August, Franklin said the program picked to get into its new training room first. Later, the weight room was completed. However, the team has been using all of it for months.
“We’re in the training room, which is really nice,” he said. “We’re really pleased with it. That was the priority. We basically had to kind of choose to be able to get into it. We couldn’t function with the training room the way we had it in the spring.
“So, we were able to get that done. So we’re in that. It’s not, like, totally done, but it’s done enough that we can get into it.”
Now, new things are likely coming to the practice fields. It marks another step in the right direction for Penn State. Franklin has focused on making improvements a regular part of his plan for the program. This would be the latest one.
