T&F needs an outdoor track as well. An indoor track is great, and long overdue, particularly since there is no indoor track facility in all of Western PA (unbelievable). It could actually make a lot of money because there is no other suitable facility in the area so it could be hosting quite a lot of meets and events. Hopefully the build it right and not cheap. But you aren't going to convince any recruits that the school takes the sport seriously without a serious Mondo surfaced outdoor facility as well.
Football's success has zero to do with being on campus or not.
Agree with all of this. I think XC/track can get by on just the indoor, provided they continue to have a good relationship with CMU to use their outdoor facility. It’d be ideal for Pitt to have both, but I don’t feel like there’s room for both back there, and I don’t know how much sense it makes to build them in totally different spots. But I think you can be baseline competitive with one, along with the potential revenue sources you mentioned.
I think if I had my way, in order of priority/speed, I’d go as follows:
1. Finish the performance center/arena (obviously)
2. Indoor track that’s proposed for the back side of the hill, where the sports dome is now and where Trees Field used to be. If you can fit a 400m track back there, too, do that at the same time.
Here’s where it gets a little more interesting.
3. I would tear down either the east half of Trees (which becomes redundant with the rec center and the arena project) or the Fitzgerald Field House (also redundant with the arena project). Whichever one is torn down, I would replace it with an athlete housing complex that includes a dining facility. This gets Pitt out of the Bridge on Forbes and into a facility that it controls, it’s adjacent to every sport’s practice facility other than football, as well as the academic support stuff in the Pete and the sports medicine/strength stuff in the new arena site, and puts housing and the training table under the same roof. The Field House site is probably better, because you can create a direct connection to the Pete/new arena. Which leads to to…
4. Expand the Petersen Events Center to build a dedicated practice facility for the men, and free up the existing practice court for the women. This expansion could also include new office space, locker rooms, and a dedicated weight room for the men, including a new entrance so recruits and visitors don’t have to enter through the loading bay. Those office spaces in the Pete right now could be repurposed into additional revenue suites.
Then, for football, these have their own timelines because aspects of this are outside of Pitt’s control.
5. Because I feel that the Steelers will likely pursue a renovation of Heinz Field, when that is being designed I would have Pitt invest a decent chunk to build its own “Pitt suite” in the renovated stadium. New locker room, new support facilities designed for Pitt (a sports medicine area for a college sized roster, rather than the smaller NFL rosters). But most importantly, spaces for hosting recruits and their families on game day. We get hit all the time by opposing schools for the game day atmosphere (though less so now than a few years ago), but one way to go about defeating that is to build out a really first-class space on game day for the team and recruits.
6. Because I also believe that the Steelers will likely pursue a plan to build a new practice facility outside of the south side complex, I would invest whatever is needed to build out Pitt’s south side presence to “take over” the whole south side facility, and use the vacated Steelers side to build out an expanded weight room, additional office space as the off-field staff continues to expand, and move more of the football-only academic support and life skills stuff that’s in the Pete over to the south side. Sharing the space with the Steelers is a big selling point right now, but if the Steelers decide to leave, the next best thing is to build out one of the best facilities in the ACC, and one that’s competitive with the Penn State’s, Michigan’s, Ohio State’s, etc. of college football.
