Wren Baker offers insight on West Tower project
The West Press Box Tower project is expected to begin following the conclusion of the 2026 West Virginia football season and Athletics Director Wren Baker provided some updates.
Baker said that the school has been quietly fundraising for the $150 million project, which will provide additional premium space and seating while modernizing the structure.
“I would just tell you that it has gone extremely well,” Baker said of the fund-raising.
If all continues to go well, Baker expects the project will be completed and open in time for the 2028 football season and officials feel pretty good about that timeline.
“I think we’re doing well and our facilities team, Rob (Alsop), our fundraising team, all of those people deserve a lot of credit for how fast that project has moved forward,” he said.
But there will be a transition if the project remains on track and the facilities team along with architects and outside consultants, have been looking at and exploring options. Baker said that there could be some temporary structures that could be erected and there also could be some temporary construction.
“I think we could look at where we can build some temporary suites in the stadium so that people are not displaced totally and that, to be completely candid, allows us to keep the revenue. Not go a year without revenue,” Baker said.
Officials are trying to do that in a way where it could be a test run for future additional premium seating so if it goes well they could look to add a permanent element down the road.
“So exploring a lot of those. Not quite there yet in terms of what that looks like and where we’d put all those structures, but definitely plan to do some temporary accommodations for some of our best donors and business supporters,” Baker said.
Overall, the capacity is only expected to be adjusted by a few hundred seats but Baker doesn’t expect any sort of major changes when it comes to cost.
“And so that will be very intentional with football to not make changes that we don’t need to make. And I think right now, most of our emphasis when we’re doing the revenue calculations is just on the new premium,” Baker said.
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