Liberty Stadium renovations likely to stretch into 2025
The planned Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium renovations are likely to affect the 2025 Memphis football season, athletic director Laird Veatch said Tuesday morning.
Veatch, appearing on Sports56’s “Mornings with Greg and Eli,” told cohosts Greg Gaston and Eli Savoie that the delay to the process means the renovations likely will affect both the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
“I would anticipate ‘25 being affected as well, almost for sure,” Veatch said. “The question really now is how much of ‘24 will be affected and in what way.”
University officials had hoped to finalize a fundraising plan and begin renovations at the beginning of 2024, but that timeline already has been pushed back. The city had $350 million in state money to allocate toward various stadium renovation projects in Memphis, but discussions about exactly how to divvy that money up had been difficult.
Drawn-out negotiations between officials from the university, city and Memphis Grizzlies hit a breakthrough in November when Fedex founder Fred Smith and his family announced a $50 million donation to help fund the stadium renovations. That money — in addition to $120 million from the city and $50 million the university plans to raise — will give the university $220 million to renovate the stadium.
The next step was to get Memphis City Council to approve the deal — and that also proved difficult, with one meeting devolving into a de facto venting session for councilors about the process and discussions about the future of the Grizzlies in the city. Then there were issues with the deals for some of the stadium’s tenants, the Southern Heritage Classic and Autozone Liberty Bowl. The process finally concluded in January, when City Council formally approved the deal that would transfer ownership of the stadium from the city to the university.
Since then, university officials have been finalizing design plans and working on fundraising.
“There’s just a lot of work,” Veatch said Tuesday. “A whole lot of work going on behind the scenes, as well as refining the design, starting the fundraising process and those conversations. There’s several working groups and a lot of activity happening, but really for the
next month or two I think you're going to see us with our heads down just really working hard to get through all that.”
While the university has yet to release a formal timeline for the project, Veatch said he expects that to come in the next couple of months.
Veatch also talked about the ongoing
negotiations regarding a contract extension for football coach Ryan Silverfield, who has two years left on his current deal.
“We are still in the process there,” Veatch said. “I feel good about the process, I feel good about the conversations with his agents and working through that. I would expect something to materialize here before long.”
Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @thejonahdylan.