Rutgers Stadium Expansion Gets Lounge, Whining

Nothing worse than a planned construction project running headlong into a recession. Financing shrinks, credit gets tighter and there is just less money available. It does not matter if it is for a private project or a public deal. Rutgers was dealing with just that problem as they started to expand their stadium.

The plans were not quite grandiose, but they did have a lot of extras beyond simply expanding the seating capacity. There were suites, expanded facilities, all sorts of amenities that have become standard in modern stadiums. Of course, with New Jersey facing a major budget crisis, donations running way behind projections, layoffs on the academic side of the university, tuition hikes and even cutting some sports from the athletic department the expansion of Rutgers Stadium was suddenly limited to expanding the seating.
That is until Rutgers was given $5 million by two private donors earmarked for one specific extra feature in the stadium. A "recruiting lounge."

The Brown Football Recruiting Lounge and Welcome Center will be named for one of the donors, Motorola CEO and Rutgers alumnus Greg Brown. The second donor, also an alumnus, requested anonymity, officials said. They said both donors explicitly directed the money toward the recruiting lounge, whose project budget is estimated at $4.85 million.

Board members voted in December to scrap the lounge -- along with other extras such as locker rooms and media facilities -- when faced with a $30 million shortfall in the $102 million project that will add 11,500 seats.

The lounge will feature a private elevator to access the lounge, plasma TVs, along with other features. It will be able to accommodate about 300 people -- or roughly a big recruiting weekend including the family and friends of the potential recruits.

An extravagant, but nice extra that did not add to the public cost of the expansion. At most places, that would be the end of it.

Instead, there has been a small but vocal contingent outraged by the money being given to a specific item that Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano had been lobbying to be restored to the project. Some wanted the money used for the general stadium expansion debt, restoring lost athletic programs, or even giving it back rather than use it this way.

All in all, some rather comical bloviating and inability to comprehend the idea of specifically targeted donations, coaches that don't stop agitating for the things they think are necessary to help them, Added bonus, neither of the donors were elected officials in New Jersey or Rabbis in the NY/NJ area.