@latechalumni: Again, thank you for all the support in the aftermath of the tornado that affected @LATech and Ruston. If you would like to donate, you can give at ltu.al/disasterrelief. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Coming from the view of someone in sports architecture, the damage to the baseball stadium is the most significant. Softball and Soccer are both primarily simple structures that can be put back together pretty quickly.
Baseball will be more work. The roof structure at the Shack is older (you can see cracks in the supports on the outside of the building from the concrete settling), and will have to be extensively tested before they can begin to consider repairing it, or removing it entirely and building something new. That could take months. Tommy saying 2020 is probably giving a worst case scenario, can it be sooner, possibly, will it be 2020, there is a chance.
Just don't go cheap and go for an erector set looking grandstand like FAU.
As of today it's about 10 months until the start of next baseball season. The baseball stadium would have to be tested to make sure it's structurally sound. That takes minimum of a month to get someone to come in and test and make a decision. Now we are at 9 months. A plan has to be made on repairing it if not replacing it. Then it has to go out for bid and there is either a 30 or 60 day wait on that. Now we are down 6/7 months. If repairs only need to be done. 6/7 months is possible to be ready for next spring. If its not and has to be rebuilt. 6/7 months would be pushing it. Hopefully it can be repaired. This also has to include fence and scoreboard replacement. Im not even going to include if money would hold up the project. Fingers crossed
I'd love for us to be able to build a nice soccer stadium and softball stadium with a building for offices/locker rooms between the two.
The facility could also have restrooms/concessions built in that would be accessible to both stadiums.
Maybe something similar to Freedom Fields at First Baptist Bossier.
Just wondering...Are these facilities covered by any kind of property insurance that Tech would be able to receive?
It is sad this happened.....but Tech should use this opportunity to demolish the softball, baseball, track and soccer facilities and start completely over with facilities.
Nothing less than state of the art facilities should be erected and they should be the pride of north Louisiana.
The indie football practice facility and soccer complex need to go where the current track is now.
Anyone that thinks the Love Shack can be saved is in denial - the place was in need of major structural work before the tornado.
Also, the new press box structure will have to be evaluated.
And we need a board of alumni to run this process - we have plenty of finance, accounting, engineering, construction, surveying, attorneys, etc that need to manage this for Tech.
Otherwise, we will end up with facilities worthy of Southland Conference status.
It's been discussed on campus for the past 10 years. It's the answer, and everyone knows it. But a couple of administrators on Tech's campus have been against it, because it infringes on the greenspace/intramural fields that have been discussed for that space for the last 25 years.