(Written by kencraw)

Over at calbears.com, they’ve got up a post about the UC regents preliminarily approving the stadium renovation. This allows them to move forward on specific construction plans and drawing and to work on the financing plan. I think this is a very good sign that they’re not getting gun-shy with all of the budget cutbacks. Of course there’s no actual financial relationship between the two, but it doesn’t change that the PR issues surrounding raising fees while at the same time reducing services makes managers nervous about approving a big project, even if they’re independently funded. It just looks bad to people who are ignorant to the distinctions and often by the time those financial distinctions are corrected, the horse is already out of the barn.

In any case, there are some notable details that are spelled out in black and white:

• The year we’ll be nomads is 2011. (Court delays aside)
• The project will cost $321 million. That’s worrisome to me because of the rules of Alto-Priolo. That means we’ve got to get a stadium evaluation at $642 million or higher. It sure would be nice if that number was under $500 million. I think that’ll be a lot easier to justify in front of a judge. I wonder if they’ve figured out ways to minimize how much of that $321 counts towards the official retrofit?
• There’s more data there on the number of ESP seats sold (at nearly 2000 of 3000).
• It also makes it pretty clear that the east side renovations are on the back-burner for quite a while, at least until “funds become available”.
• Not that this is new, but they’ll be lowering the field 3 feet.

In any case, good to see they’re moving forward.