The director of Eastern Washington University Athletics made a major announcement on Sep. 26: Roos Field is getting a new look.

Following years of proposals, a $25 million renovation proposal for Roos Field involving the construction of a press box on the east side of the stadium has been approved, contingent on a $13 million fundraising effort.

“Right now, we’re evaluating all opportunities with improvements to our stadium and gameday experience that would help us generate more revenue,” Athletics Director Tim Collins said.

While a press box would open up the west side of the stadium for the installation of new suites and club seats, potentially leading to more ticket sales, Collins says the benefits of this plan are not limited strictly to finances.

One advantage is “increased amenities and improvement of our gameday experience. That’s what our external community, and what our fans would just feel on every Saturday,” said Collins.

An improved stadium may also bring attention and new faces to Roos Field and EWU as a whole, he said. Students that The Easterner reached out to generally supported this claim, with five out of seven saying that the renovations would make them more likely to attend football games.

“One of the things that we do in athletics is we bring visitors. We bring our community together and we bring visitors to our campus and expose them to Eastern Washington University,” Collins said.

Multiple renovations to Roos Field have been proposed in the past, most recently in 2019.

“There’s no secret that there have been aspirations for construction specific to Roos Field for decades…nothing ever really stuck,” Collins said. “What we’ve evaluated over the last year is what work could be done that would have a direct tie to generating revenue.”

Eastern Washington University is unable to use state funds for building or renovating athletic facilities, causing the athletic department to rely on the community to finance the project.

“The funding model would all be private funds. $13 million would be philanthropy and donations raised. The remaining balance would be paid in revenues generated off of the facility,” Collins said.

In a Sep. 26 announcement, Collins noted that the school had already raised $6 million of their goal.

Staff and faculty involved in a recent program evaluation urged the university to consider “all options to decrease Football’s unsustainable deficit spending, including moving Football to a lower division.”

The response to this recommendation from the school stated that stadium investments could produce an added $900,000 per year.

“The (staff and faculty) recommendations were for us to transform football, and I think it’s a statement of what our university leadership and our community have loudly spoken,” Collins said. “We’re a Division I football-playing member of the Big Sky, and so we’re going to make commensurate facility investments to belong at that level, and to be a competitive entity at that level.”

The EWU Faculty Organization declined to comment on the renovation proposal.

Collins also noted that Eastern Washington University projects that the renovations will generate more revenue than the construction bill.

“(Roos Field) is a facility that our campus should be proud of,” Collins said. “We want to make the improvements so that our campus and our community can be proud of it. We want to have a football stadium that reflects that.”