YSU favors site for $10M sports facility

By Harold Gwin

A tentative timetable shows the center under construction in mid-2010.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State University is looking to put its first indoor sports training facility, with a $10 million price tag, on the north side of campus.

An existing outdoor track just east of Elm Street and south of the Madison Avenue Expressway is the preferred location, according to a project update presented to the YSU Board of Trustees.

The WATTS (Watson And Tressel Training Site) Center has been a reality since the university announced in mid-2007 that former YSU head football coach Jim Tressel and his wife, Ellen, and her parents, Frank and Norma Watson, had pledged to give the university $1 million to help build an indoor practice field.

The WATTS Center has been undergoing design and revisions since then, and the recommended plan presented recently to the board of trustees by Ron Strollo, YSU executive director of athletics, shows a $10 million facility that will house a full-size indoor football field, a 300-meter indoor track, locker rooms and related facilities in a 120,200-square-foot package.

It’s a central location, close to Stambaugh Stadium, and will be used by the university’s intercollegiate baseball, football, soccer, softball and track teams as well as for student recreation and intramural sports and perhaps the community, Strollo said in his report.

Some new outdoor recreation facilities for softball and soccer would come later.

The trustees have already given tentative approval to the project. The board’s recent vote to borrow $47 million through the sale of bonds for a variety of campus improvement projects shows the WATTS Center on the project list, with $5 million earmarked for the facility.

That list shows construction could begin in July 2010 with completion in early 2011.

The rest of the financing will come from philanthropic gifts, headed by the $1 million from the Tressel and Watson families.

Youngstown native Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. has contributed $750,000 to the project and total gifts so far have reached $3 million, with $2 million yet to be raised, according to Strollo.

The athletics department will contribute $250,000 a year to help pay the debt service on the $5 million in bond funds earmarked for the project.

There are no plans to increase any student fees to help pay for the facility, university officials have said.

Strollo told the trustees that the university looked at three options for the center on four potential sites.

Option one called for only a football field under roof while another option called for a half-sized football field under roof. The third option — a full-size football field, a 300-meter track and other amenities — is the one being recommended, he said.

The possible sites, beyond the one recommended, included building the center on the west side of Fifth Avenue across from Stambaugh Stadium, putting it where existing tennis courts are located just west of Elm Street and south of the Madison Avenue Expressway and even using an inflatable structure to be erected over Beede Field in the stadium itself.

When the project was first announced, David C. Sweet, YSU president, said YSU athletic teams were at a distinct competitive disadvantage because of Youngstown’s northern climate, which limits outdoor practice time and the center would correct that problem.

Strollo has said that the facility is critical for the growth of YSU’s football program in terms of raising its level of competitiveness and ability to recruit student-athletes.

gwin@vindy.com