More cost than consideration of lost revenue as I understand it. There is a wish list of future enhancements, including seating, but to my knowledge no funding or concrete schedules as yet. The last year's affect on finances certainly doesn't help!
Also, the dome is not ADA compliant. That is okay; it was built before ADA was the law and is grandfathered in.
But when a facility that is non compliant with ADA is renovated, the government expects changes to me made to start addressing the non-compliance.
To their credit, SU has done this already to some degree. Some significant upgrades have been made. I think since this article was written, all rest rooms are now ADA compliant.
The Carrier Dome is undergoing renovations to create a more accessible venue.
dailyorange.com
For some reason, the government thinks changing the seats is such a major change that doing it drives a requirement for the entire facility to be brought up to current ADA standards.
It is unbelievably expensive to do this for a facility designed before the ADA requirements were devised. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a major problem for a small private university.
I think the government has programs to help offset some of the costs involved but this involves detailed government oversight, lots of red tape and lots of negotiation and give and take to develop a plan everyone can live with.
Maybe with a Syracuse man in the Oval Office, some of the issues can be addressed more quickly. In the meantime, the SU fan base is stuck with the uncomfortable seating we have all been dealing with for more than 40 years.
Believe me, the problem is not with SUAD. They know the seating is bad and want to replace it. I hope a solution can be worked out sometime relatively soon.
