I was just up at Skytop today with an individual showing him where the new stadium was being proposed just before the stock market went into the crapper. Several things happened which I'm not going to get into here that put everything in the wrong direction. There were investors who were fast trackers who met with TGD. The OK was given from the top to proceed. Sometime take a ride to the very top of Sky Top, you'll see there is plenty of land for a stadium/hotel/restaurant. Parking and access were to be on the perimeter taking out part of Drumlins Golf course. Some of the people at the meeting were investors another individual had been involved in other stadium projects. It was a business deal whereby the university provided the land and the people getting the financing would get parking/concessions and other rights. The university would get their state of the art stadium with retractable roof and the football program would get the shot in the arm to get jump started back to relevance. They were looking at an el system for use to transport fans and students back & forth to the main campus. The restaurant would be a hall of fame type with the decor in SU colors, trophy & picture displays, rooms where you could view videos of great games. The talks were serious.
I got a kick out of a statement from an old friend, state senator John DeFrancisco when asked about the possibility. I think it's a foolish idea, they can't even fill the stadium that they have. It's the same kind of narrow minded thinking that was expressed back in 1969 when my group first proposed a domed stadium. Frank Gualteri, who was the Republican candidate for mayor, said he thought it was a grandiose idea in these times of inflation. At the time a domed stadium similar to what was built would have cost $6 million. There were state and federal matching funds available. About 10 years later that figure went up by around $20 million.
