Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
FAU breaks ground on $45M athletic complex
BOCA RATON — Beneath nine chandeliers hanging from a white tent on Florida Atlantic’s campus, a box of red sand rested on the ground. Punctured by 12 shovels and later surrounded by an open bar and 300 potential donors, the box remained otherwise pristine.
It served as the de facto centerpiece of FAU’s Friday night, when the university held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Schmidt Family Complex for Academic & Athletic Excellence. The approximately $45 million complex is the future home of FAU football, and is set to open in the summer of 2018.
At the end of the 30-minute program Friday night — after speeches from administrators, student-athletes, donors and Owls coach Lane Kiffin — the sand could finally be sullied. University dignitaries, including President John Kelly, donors Dick and Barbara Schmidt and Kiffin, dug in and tossed the red sand, a symbolic beginning of construction on the grounds west of FAU Stadium.
“That beautiful stadium we have takes care of six days and then we’re six days on the road,” FAU Athletics Director Pat Chun said. “We’ll have, probably, conference championship game and a bowl game on top of that. But other than that, the 350 other days of the year will be housed in the Schmidt Complex. Obviously, a huge day for us.”
FAU, Kelly and Chun hope the facility will be a jewel in Boca Raton. It is intended to push the school into the upper tier among peer Conference USA schools. With its addition, Chun deems FAU’s combination of facilities to be the best south of Gainesville.
The facility will be 96,000 square feet of space that features a 125-seat auditorium, study rooms, a weight room, a training room and coaches’ offices. Two outdoor practice fields are also in the plans, with an indoor field slated for Phase II of construction and subject to budget constraints.
Additionally, the project calls for the renovation of about 15,000 square feet in the stadium to upgrade the locker rooms and support spaces. FAU Stadium was completed in 2011.
The financing for the Schmidt Complex will come from two sources. University funds will account for $6.5 million. The rest will come from donations. Chun said Phase I will cost between $35 and $40 million, while Phase II is estimated at $10 to $16 million.
The fundraising has not been completed, according to Chun, though he did say about $30 million had already been raised. The complex is named after FAU donors Dick and Barbara Schmidt, who donated $16 million to the project, the single largest gift in university history.
Its arrival should signal a modernization of the program and is another indication of FAU’s additional investment in the football team. In December, the school signed Kiffin to a five-year, $4.75 million contract and allotted him $1.7 million to spend on assistant coaches. The salaries were about a $1 million increase from 2016.
The hype surrounding the facility has been felt not only on the recruiting trail but also during FAU’s courtship of Kiffin, when he cited it as a reason to coach the Owls. Highschool prospects have been pitched the planned facility for years. On Friday, Kiffin said opposing coaches negatively recruited against FAU by mentioning its weight room.
“The only thing anybody else has to say negative about Florida Atlantic is one thing: The facilities and the weight room,” Kiffin said. “Well, that’s easy. That’s already being fixed. To know that is awesome. You can’t change a lot of things about the school. You can’t change the location, you can’t change stadium size, you can’t change a lot of things, but you can change that.”
The Owls currently occupy the Tom Oxley Athletic Center, an undersized and outdated building on the west side of campus that houses many other varsity sports. The teams share a weight room and the building lacks meeting space sufficient to meet the growing department, the school determined in the fall of 2013.