The University’s landscape of athletic buildings is getting another makeover courtesy of Phil Knight.
The University’s athletic department unveiled its newly forged plans to expand the Casanova Center and build a new facility for its women’s soccer and lacrosse programs between Autzen Stadium and PK Park.
According to the department’s press release, the growth of Ducks athletics in recent years has necessitated the expansion of the 20-year-old center, as well as the development of a world-class operations center for the University’s football team.
“This project epitomizes a long line of world-class facilities … (and it) will add to the support we offer all our student-athletes,” University Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Rob Mullens said in the release. “We are also fortunate to have an exceptional team leading the planning phase of this important project.”
The six-story facility’s construction will be funded entirely by private donations from Penny and Phil Knight, the founder of athletic clothing giant Nike and will include no use of public, state or general University dollars, according to the athletic department. Like the John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, the construction tab for the Casanova Center expansion is private information because the expansion’s building site will be leased to a private corporation and only be returned to the University’s possession after completion. University President Richard Lariviere said to the Oregon State Board of Higher Education on June 4 that the improvements would be in the range of “tens of millions of dollars.”
Wrapping around the north and west sides of the center, the expansion will include a 25,000-square-foot weight room adjacent to three new grass and synthetic turf practice fields. The facility’s ground floor will boast a lobby and reception area and a full-service dining facility available to all University athletes, students and staff. At its heart, a centralized football operations center will include separate offensive and defensive strategy meeting rooms, two video theatres and a large conference suite for the entire coaching staff, all flanked by a player’s lounge and office and locker facilities for coaches.
Preliminary plans for the expansion were approved at the June 4 state Board of Higher Education meeting, during which Lariviere spelled out the project’s details while explaining his rationale for accepting the generous gift.
“I suspect that if we don’t do something today, this deal will be off the table,” Lariviere said at the meeting. “This is a remarkably generous gesture by Penny and Phil Knight, (and) it is going to be done in exactly the same structure as the Jaqua Center was given to the University.”
At one point in the meeting, however, Lariviere spoke frankly about how the school has been obliged to embrace such projects even if they do not buttress the University’s educational mission.
“It really doesn’t have that much to do with the central mission of the University of Oregon,” he said. “All of us who know better need to be educating the public that athletics is entertainment and education and research is why the University exists.”
The athletic department expects the groundbreaking for the 130,000-square-foot expansion to commence at the start of the 2011 with an anticipated completion date of summer 2013. The project will free up considerable space in the Casanova Center, which currently houses the majority of the department’s administrative and coaching offices, medical and training facilities, and locker and meeting rooms.
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