Iowa to break ground on football practice facility this fall

IOWA CITY - Iowa's athletics department hopes to break ground on a new indoor football practice facility sometime this fall, Athletics Director Gary Barta said Thursday.

The project was approved by the state Board of Regents last December and the facility's location has been altered in the last six months. It is slated for west of Kinnick Stadium in a wooded area just south of the outdoor practice fields. The football program will vacate the current facility upon the project's completion.

Barta said there are two phases to the project, and the priority is constructing a fixed-roof indoor practice area.

“I think the preference or the desire has always been to have everything restructured, re-created and built separately,” Barta said. “Just in the last year or two we started to make or create the thought process of a long-term strategy, and that's to build the indoor facility first, complete that, While we're doing that, raise the money to rebuild all the rest of it.”

The projected cost for the indoor practice facility is “a few million more than” $20 million, Barta said. The total project likely will cost between $40 million and $50 million.

Barta said the second phase includes a weight room, meeting rooms and offices, which likely will face Kinnick Stadium. He hopes to open part of the building to display Iowa football's tradition and history to fans.

“It can be open to the public, not just on gameday, but during the week as well,” Barta said. “But then there's a good separation between that and where the student-athletes train and meet and work out. That's one of the advantages to rebuilding. You can create it so it has that in mind, rather than trying to add on to an existing facility, especially if we can find out a reuse for the current building, which we're taking a look at.”

Relocating the new football facility could mean dividends for other sports. Iowa's gymnastics programs currently train at the aging Iowa Field House, but will move into the current football operations building, which will be renovated. Iowa's baseball program will stay put at Duane Banks Field, but the potential exists for a new baseball stadium built at the western campus.

“We're always looking to the future,” Barta said. “If I'm looking out 10 years from now ... we've had discussions. Do we rebuild the stadium where baseball is or do we look out at what we call the Hawkeye campus out by field hockey, soccer, tennis? It's not something that's in our next one- to three-year plan-type thing.”