Spectrum - Volume 20 Issue 33 June 18, 1998 - Stadium refurbishment under way

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Stadium refurbishment under way

By Chris Pugh

Spectrum Volume 20 Issue 33 - June 18, 1998

When Virginia Tech meets East Carolina on the football field on September 5, fans on both sides of Lane Stadium should be sitting in a refurbished facility.
Repairs to the seating area of the stadium are being done by Richmond Primoid, a company specializing in stadium renovations, according to Chris Peters, facilities manager.
One section at a time, the stadium's nearly 50,000 seats will be removed and the concrete under the seats will be repaired. Jack hammers are used to chisel out some of the concrete, "especially where it has been coming up," Peters said. Each area will be patched with new concrete, pressure washed, primed and painted with a non-skid sealant before the seats are replaced.
Peters said that all the wood and aluminum seats in good condition will be used again, but "many, many thousands of seats will be replaced." At the edge of the concrete steps in each area a painted orange strip will serve as a safety warning and burgundy lettering will identify the rows, Peters said.
"They've employed students and student athletes to help," Peters said, adding that the project is scheduled to be completed two weeks before the first football game. Rain would slow down the process, which requires dry weather, he added.
Randy Butt, business manager in the Athletic Department, said the stadium-seat renovation was one of four capital projects from a $6.2-million bond issue. Three completed projects paid with the bond were repairing to the coliseum roof , finishing the women's softball complex, and installing artificial grass in the field house.
The seat-repair project made up $1.9 million of the $6.2 million bond appropriated in the 1996-98 biennium, said Jim McCoy, director of Capital Design and Construction.
Other stadium-repair projects set for this summer and funded through a reserve-maintenance fund include roof repair and replacement over both the visiting team's locker room and handicapped bathrooms as well as repairing the risers above the visiting locker room, Butt said.