Rutgers Athletics is on the rise.
No, seriously.
Every time you turn around it seems like the athletic department is helping to upgrade the facilities of just about every single one of the Scarlet Knights programs.
Most recently the university opened up the brand new Gary and Barbara Rodkin Academic Success Center, which not only is the new home of Rutgers soccer and lacrosse programs, but will also serve as an academic hub for all Rutgers athletes.
In order to learn more about the building, TKR went one-on-one with Rutgers University Athletic Director Pat Hobbs to go into details about the school’s latest facility and what will come next.
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RICHARD SCHNYDERITE: Let’s start off talking about the Rodkin Center, it just opened up recently and what kind of impact has it made so far?
PAT HOBBS: “We are delighted to be able to open it recently, even during a very difficult time with COVID and the pandemic. The builder, Natoli Construction, did a phenomenal job working with Ewing Cole, the architects. It just came out phenomenal, everyone who has been in that building has raved about it. The academic advisors are still working mostly remotely, but now they’ve been able to go in and hold some study halls with some of their teams. Because of the size of the building and the amount of space in there for academics, they have been able to spread out and be very careful. Everything about it is just thought through so well, the most common comment that we’ve got from our student athletes is that, I’m never leaving'. That’s a good statement about a building.”
RS: So obviously the Rodkin will house the lacrosse and soccer programs, but how has it impacted the football program, now that there is likely some open space in the Hale Center.
PH: “Right now Greg (Schiano) and I agree with him here, they are continuing to do their academic support in the Hale Center rather than the Rodkin, just because we are trying to keep everybody as spread out as possible. Our football program did a phenomenal job with social distancing, being vigilant and all the things that we wanted in the fall and Greg wants that to continue. So probably I would say through the next couple of months, they will continue to provide academic support in the Hale Center, while what we do for our other teams will be in the Rodkin building. Once the weather turns and we are able to open up those terraces, I know our football program will be spending a lot of time there. Greg can’t wait, he took a tour of the building and thought it was phenomenal. It’s good to get your football team out of the Hale Center and into another building, that’s where their advisors will be. For us importantly it becomes a hub for all of our student athletes, they will get to visit with each other, see each other, but again that’s all post pandemic. Hopefully by the summer most people are vaccinated and we get to return to something more normal and we can really use the building as we intended.”
RS: Sticking with the football program, where are you guys at currently with the future indoor practice facility?
PH: “The football operations building will include an indoor field. Right now we are still working through the conceptual phase. If you were to divide it into phases, there is the conceptual phase and that’s where you figure out where it is going to be located, what the components are of the building and what is most important to Greg in the building. Then the architects start to get feedback and then you get to the stage where you go into design. We are not yet in the design phase, we are still making sure what we want in the building, how do we want the building to function and then you start to do feasibility work around what the cost is going to be, how much of that cost is going to be privately raised and how much you will bond on. There is a lot of work to be done and obviously given the environment that we are currently in we have all been pretty patient on it.”
RS: Speaking of the environment that we are currently in, how much of an impact has COVID and the pandemic made on fundraising, can’t imagine it’s been easy with everything going on.
PH: “Our donors and the Rutgers faithful have been really generous. Many donated their ticket deposits to the program rather than rolling it over. We had over $2 million in donations from those ticket deposits. We are actually running ahead of last year of where we are in terms of total dollars raised. I credit that to first our very generous donors and the people who support Rutgers because they see what we are trying to build and they want to be supportive of it. It’s also a credit to Sarah Baumgartner who is my deputy AD, Carly Northupp who is my Senior Associate AD for Development and her whole team. One of the things that has been difficult in this environment is the continuous contact. People like to see each other and get updates. You used to be able to have a sidebar at the basketball game or at one of the football games and none of that we were able to do this year. We’ve done Zoom calls and we try to continue to provide folks with as much information as possible. Folks have been great, but when we sit down and want to start talking about the football building and some of the larger needs that we are going to have in the months and years ahead, you hope you can do that in person it is much better.”
RS: Jumping back to facilities upgrades, one facility that not a lot of people have talked about it the upgrades that the golf programs recently received.
PH: “We have two simulator rooms now for our teams and the kids love them. They spend a lot of time there, but right now they are both traveling for the beginning of their competitive golf season. It is a really great asset to have for our golf programs, it was done the right way. I know both Rob Shutte and Kari Williams are very happy with it. You’re right though, we’ve done a lot of smaller projects that we did early this year. We just did the softball locker room, a new field hockey locker room, next week we are going to open our new women’s track locker room and that’s all in the RAC. One of the great things that we are now able to do because we’ve been able to move not just soccer and lacrosse, but most of my administration over the Rodkin building, it has freed up space inside the RAC. This has helped us to improve the office situation for baseball, softball, our rowing program as well as some of our administrators to continue to be housed there. Some folks have gone from being in a closet to being in a real office, which is really nice.”
RS: I’m sure you’ve been asked this one a lot, but what’s the plan for baseball and softball, is there any chance of stadium lights in the near future?
PH: “One of the things that we hope to have finished by the end of this academic year is what we call our facilities master plan phase two. We have been working with AECOM architects for the past two years and assessing all of the needs that we have across all of our programs. So far baseball and softball, you talk about lights, some form of stadium. We talk about the tennis program and what we need to do for tennis because we’d like to move them over to the Livingston campus. Now all that will be in one document and will get presented over to our president Jonathan Holloway for his approval and then we prioritize out of all that. Now if somebody steps up and says, “Hey I’d like to pay for lights or I’d like to pay for this”, then we get it done more quickly. But, we get it done all in one document so we have a plan going forward and then it’s just a matter of prioritizing. Obviously the football facility will be our number one priority, but we also have to do some things to the RAC and SHI Stadium as well. That will all be in this one document.”
RS: You mentioned renovations for the RAC, what type of upgrades could we see there?
PH: “So AECOM has done some really good work for us. There has been no pricing of that or anything that far advanced, that is as I said will go to the president and the board. They will take a look at it and once they greenlight some of those things, we will start to go a little deeper into design and then you start assessing cost. One of the nice things about the work that I’ve seen from AECOM so far is a significant upgrade in premium seating, club areas, concourse, availability of amenities, whether that is bathrooms or concessions for our fans and all of that will drive revenue. So you do an assessment of additional revenue and that will tell you sort of what we can afford to spend on renovation and construction. We will keep an eye on what other types of programs are out there here at the Federal and State level, which we might be able to take advantage of because any kind of construction work produces jobs. So we will keep an eye on everything and tee it up as quickly as we can.”
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