The conversion of the Student Pavilion into a new indoor football facility is nearing completion, as the turf has now been delivered and glued down.
20/20 Visual Media posted a photograph of the field to Instagram on Wednesday, but the image has since been taken down from its feed.
The plan, according to senior vice president for construction, facilities and operations James Creedon, is to have the facility ready for use by the time the football team breaks camp in August.
“If it rains, they can still practice,” Creedon said. “If it’s extremely humid like today, they can still practice. If it’s snowing in November, they can still practice in time. So I think it’s just natural to give them a lot more options. There’s more accessibility for practice and drills and whatever else to make sure the team has what it needs.”
Although plans for this indoor practice structure were announced less than two months ago, constructing such a facility had been talked about for quite some time. Originally, the Pavilion was set to be demolished to make way for the proposed new library, which is now going to be built on the east side of Broad Street.
“There’s been conversations about an indoor facility in various forms since I started working at Temple back in late 2011,” Creedon said. “We looked at just football facilities, we looked at larger indoor recreational facilities, and we looked at all types of different locations. What happened was we just started talking about shorter-term options that might be available to us now that we’re taking another look at the location of the library.”
The project, according to Creedon, carries a budget of $290,000 and the source of the funding is from the university itself—not specifically from the athletic budget.
Now that the adhesive and turf have been installed, the construction crew will continue with lettering and numbering on Monday.
Avery Maehrer can be reached at avery.maehrer@temple.edu or on Twitter @AveryMaehrer.
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