The Arizona Board of Regents expressed displeasure Wednesday with the way ASU handled its plans to renovate Sun Devil Stadium.
While hearing a report on an ASU Stadium District Proposal, ABOR Vice President Ernest Calderon said ASU did not formally inform the board of its intentions before making them public.
“The Board of Regents formally learned … about ASU’s plan to seek a stadium district plan through the newspaper,” Calderon said.
The plan, which calls for $170 million to renovate the sports complex, was announced through local media outlets on Oct. 17 without getting ABOR’s approval.
Calderon reminded ASU that it is “not a separate legal entity” and called the action “discourteous.”
“It owes the courtesy to the Board of Regents to present [the plan] to the board,” he said. “You don’t treat supporters the way we were treated in this situation.”
Calderon told ASU representatives at the meeting that no new taxes or initiatives may be floated to the public until they are submitted to the board.
Carol Campbell, assistant to the chief financial officer at ASU, apologized to the board, saying there must have been some miscommunication.
“Most of us were not aware that this gaffe occurred, but we do apologize,” she said.
Campbell said the plan is necessary for Sun Devil Stadium because of structural, functional and aesthetic deficiencies.
She said a $10 million project completed in 2006 corrected some major problems, but it really only bought about five to 10 years until additional work would be needed.
Campbell said ASU officials considered a $60 million proposal that would bring the stadium back to a functional level and extend its life, but the problems would be repeated.
“Then we would have an old, tired, far less than adequate … project at that point,” she said.
To completely transform the stadium into a new facility would cost over $200 million, with an additional $117 million needed to add a sunshade on top, Campbell said.
But the proposal still has to go through ABOR and the state legislature, Campbell said, despite the University’s initial oversight in informing ABOR.
“This is a very long way from being done,” she said. “This is the first piece, and this just provides the framework on which the project will go forward.”
Reach the reporter at adam.sneed@asu.edu.
