(Written by kencraw)

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my biggest concern when I heard about the plan to pay for the Memorial Stadium retrofit, the plan to charge a fortune for luxury boxes and other prime seats to the tune of $50K-$225K per seat over 50 years, my biggest worry was where they were going to find the people who would pay it.

I thought it was a great plan, but they were already having trouble getting people to pay the Bear Backer fees for the seats they had. Heck, I know I’m sitting in seats outside the Bear Backer section because I’m not willing to pony up the big bucks. My 6 seats cost more than I’m comfortable with already.

Additionally, while I know this is harder for people like Jason my co-blogger to hear (because he has those prime seats), I’m OK with the idea that we’re going to kick some former donors or long time season ticket holders out of their prime seats to make room for new donors (or extended donors). At this point, those people will get about 10 seasons of exceptional seats for a program that is good enough to justify doing what other good programs around the country have been doing for a long time. They’ll still get pretty good seats as long-time season ticket holders in the non-donor section when everyone gets shuffled around. I think a 10-year thank you for their loyalty through the thin times is sufficient even thought I don’t begrudge them being disappointed for wanting it to last indefinitely.

The point of that longer-than-intended explination is that I was perfectly happy with plan and its consequences, but I was unsure whether it would work. Were they really going to find 3000 people who had a couple hundred thousand (two seats) to give over the next 30 years?

Well, good news!:

Since Cal began the seat endowment program in January, 40 percent of the 3,000 available seats have been claimed, with about 10 percent paying up front and the rest making 30-year commitments. So far, the university has raised more than $164 million, Rosselli said.

I’d say that’s pretty good progress on the program. Considering that the renovation is going to cost $250 million or so (estimates vary), we’re about half way there! Now admittedly, they’ve only got about $40-$50 million of that in the bank with the rest coming over 30 years, but still, great progress!

Good news all the way around

(As an aside, if you click on the link for the article, do your best to ignore the derisive tone of both the article and the ill-informed commentors. We know what’s going on and whether or not we agree with the mechanism used for raising the money, we know it needs to be raised. Seeing that this mechanism is working suggests the University did the right thing.)