The Evanston Land Use Commission gave approval for the new football stadium, but not for using it for concerts.
Lacking concerts means donors have to make up the $10 million(guess) a year.
I have yet to talk to a season ticket holder that is even remotely interested in paying PSLs.
At the PSU game I talked with a guy who has 21 seats. He leaves at half time and tailgates and comes back with another ticket. Totally insane, but I’m sure he would drop seats with PSLs. If our stadium was full or at least not empty I would love to see more tickets sold to those who actually attend and stay all 4 quarters, but my guess is a lot of seats will be dropped with PSLs…
I bet if someone on the list wanted to attend with 24 of their friends I could talk around and find 25 tickets at the 45-ish yard line, 30-ish row sitting relatively close together without a problem for face value or less. Now don’t come calling for home games vs. tOSU and Michigan, but even Wisconsin and Io_a I could easily get 10 seats.
The demand is just not there. Sad, but true.
The Evanston Land Use Commission is only a recommending body. The City Council will decide whether to approve the plan for the rebuild and whether to approve the rezoning to allow concerts and other events. It’s not unheard of for the Land Use Commission (previously called the Plan Commission in Evanston) to unanimously vote against a proposal only to have the City Council approve it nearly unanimously. When making zoning changes, nearby landowner are entitled to hearing that comport with the requirements of due process, and the LUC provides the forum for those hearings, which is why the LUC conducted three nights of hearings that lasted over 15 hours.
It’s unclear whether Northwestern has the votes for the zoning change. They need five votes. One alderman has recused himself, and four have made comments suggesting they may not support concerts. The mayor can break a 4-4 tie, but it’s unclear what he would do (he previously ran for governor, so he has higher aspirations, although it’s also not clear how that may bear on his decision). My best guess is that further negotiations will yield a further compromise that will get approval from the City Council, including allowing at least some concerts, possibly with additional restrictions.
As someone who owns a house two blocks from the stadium (I can see it from my bedroom), I have some mixed feeling about concerts, but mainly because I don’t know how much of a nuisance the noise could be. I’m not too concerned about crowds and congestion, although that could depend on the size and frequency of concerts (some neighbors are very concerned; and others aren’t concerned at all). For the types of acts Northwestern has said they hope to book, I doubt they will have anywhere near the 28,500-person crowd they say will be the max for concerts.
As a fan and alum, I have some reservations about investing $800 million in a football stadium. Would a $500 million stadium be adequate? I don’t know. I share the concern about whether there will be sufficient demand for all the additional premium seats. The Wilson Club at Welsh-Ryan has seen enough demand to mostly fill it even in down years (although those fans don’t always show up), but they’re talking about a lot more premium seats like that for the new stadium (including as many as three different clubs like the Wilson Club at three different levels of investment).
To your question about annual maintenance costs, Northwestern reportedly said last night they’re hoping to cover $3 million in annual costs with concerts. It’s hard to see that they wouldn’t move forward with the project over that amount, but that’s what they’re continuing to say.
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2023/10/12/land-use-commission-backs-ryan-field-rebuild-rejects-concerts/
The historically small crowds for this last year in the old stadium have been a little sad. To take in a new perspective for our last two seasons, my son and I got seats on the fifty in the upper deck this year and last, and we’ve been taking a ton of pictures. Happy to have seen them win three games there so far this year, including one conference win. That one conference win equals the number of home conference wins we’ve witnessed in the last four years combined (we didn’t witness any in 2020 due to no fans, and our 2021 win over Rutgers is our only other home Big Ten win since 2018).
The Evanston Land Use Commission is only a recommending body. The City Council will decide whether to approve the plan for the rebuild and whether to approve the rezoning to allow concerts and other events. It’s not unheard of for the Land Use Commission (previously called the Plan Commission in Evanston) to unanimously vote against a proposal only to have the City Council approve it nearly unanimously. When making zoning changes, nearby landowner are entitled to hearing that comport with the requirements of due process, and the LUC provides the forum for those hearings, which is why the LUC conducted three nights of hearings that lasted over 15 hours.
It’s unclear whether Northwestern has the votes for the zoning change. They need five votes. One alderman has recused himself, and four have made comments suggesting they may not support concerts. The mayor can break a 4-4 tie, but it’s unclear what he would do (he previously ran for governor, so he has higher aspirations, although it’s also not clear how that may bear on his decision). My best guess is that further negotiations will yield a further compromise that will get approval from the City Council, including allowing at least some concerts, possibly with additional restrictions.
As someone who owns a house two blocks from the stadium (I can see it from my bedroom), I have some mixed feeling about concerts, but mainly because I don’t know how much of a nuisance the noise could be. I’m not too concerned about crowds and congestion, although that could depend on the size and frequency of concerts (some neighbors are very concerned; and others aren’t concerned at all). For the types of acts Northwestern has said they hope to book, I doubt they will have anywhere near the 28,500-person crowd they say will be the max for concerts.
As a fan and alum, I have some reservations about investing $800 million in a football stadium. Would a $500 million stadium be adequate? I don’t know. I share the concern about whether there will be sufficient demand for all the additional premium seats. The Wilson Club at Welsh-Ryan has seen enough demand to mostly fill it even in down years (although those fans don’t always show up), but they’re talking about a lot more premium seats like that for the new stadium (including as many as three different clubs like the Wilson Club at three different levels of investment).
To your question about annual maintenance costs, Northwestern reportedly said last night they’re hoping to cover $3 million in annual costs with concerts. It’s hard to see that they wouldn’t move forward with the project over that amount, but that’s what they’re continuing to say.
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2023/10/12/land-use-commission-backs-ryan-field-rebuild-rejects-concerts/
The historically small crowds for this last year in the old stadium have been a little sad. To take in a new perspective for our last two seasons, my son and I got seats on the fifty in the upper deck this year and last, and we’ve been taking a ton of pictures. Happy to have seen them win three games there so far this year, including one conference win. That one conference win equals the number of home conference wins we’ve witnessed in the last four years combined (we didn’t witness any in 2020 due to no fans, and our 2021 win over Rutgers is our only other home Big Ten win since 2018).
What PSL stand for?
Regards,
Lou Martinaitis
PSL is a personal seat license, it’s a way of increasing ticket revenue without increasing the face value of tickets by selling a license, either on a one-time or ongoing basis, for the right to buy those same tickets every year, usually for a fixed period of time.
Another common practice is the ‘required donation’ to buy certain tickets. Those donations have tax deductible, though the IRS has been casting a suspicious eye at them for a while.
2017 tax law curtailed the tax deductibility of donations for tickets. That more than IRS suspicion has all but eliminated the practice
On an off day for NU wAnted to call attention to Stanford rallying from down 29-0 vs Colorado to win in OT. Too bad the point differential was not a few points higher prior to the comeback; Prime Time and Co. came close to breaking NU’s record of blown lead
Harry
Northwestern using the “required donation” approach, not seat licenses. And the required donations for seating are not tax deductible at all under the current tax code passed in December 2017 (part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) (ironically passed just before the new Welsh-Ryan opened after NU was already marketing seats with the assumption that the donations would be at least partially deductible—I think they were 80% deductible under the old law).
On the other hand, donations to be eligible for season parking are tax deductible, I think because they aren’t tied to a specific seat.
The FAQs on the following NU website explain some of this, although I just noticed today that it says that required donations for seating in the new Ryan Field will be separate from the required donations for seating in Welsh-Ryan arena. Today, you can double count. For example, a required donation for the Wilson Club at Welsh-Ryan also counts as your required donation for the Stadium Club at Ryan Field. Apparently that will change with the new Ryan Field. See the answer to the FAQ: “What is a seating contribution and which season tickets require a seating contribution?” toward the bottom of the page.
The Evanston City Council will hold a special meeting on October 30th to discuss the NU stadium proposal.
The Evanston City Council advanced Northwestern’s stadium project forward on a 5-4 vote with the Mayor making the tie-breaking vote.
The Council’s vote includes provisions for concerts.
A three-hour public hearing was unruly, with two shoving incidents.
A final vote may take place on November 13th.
NU did toss another $100M into the pot in the form of community benefits.
Jeff
Well, we all knew something like would happen, just not the specifics!
Out in my neck of the woods in NorCal any time a for profit entity wants to build a large new development they get hit up for funds for a new library or park or whatever It’s a legal bribe not to individuals but to the local community. I’m not as familiar with the process for a non profit entity. Then again NU may be considered a non profit but is considered big enough to be held up
Harry
Northwestern has been doing this with the city of Evanston for decades. When I was at NU, I remember them buying the city a new fire truck.
Hey, a Fire Truck could help put out a fire in the dorms…
Just so they don’t let anyone blow up old disco records on the 50 yard line when they get it open.
Go B1GCats
rsl
As a guy born in Chicago and raised in Evanston with Bears season tickets in my family for 60 years and 2 degrees from NU I will never understand why with all the money in the world those two could not get together and build a world class stadium on the lakefront somewhere
There’s not a lot of empty lakeshore property north of the current Soldier Field site until you get to Lake County. And anyone who owns lakeshore property will tell you that lake erosion is a major issue.
As an organization, the Bears can be found in the dictionary under ‘cheapskates’.
They want a fancy-shmancy new stadium, but they want someone else to pay for most of it. Not sure that’s gonna happen.
I also don’t think Northwestern wants to join the group of schools who have their football stadiums totally off campus, though some would say they’ve been that way all along.
The Evanston City Council is expected to take a final vote on the NU stadium zoning motion tonight, mayor Daniel Biss is expected to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of the project. (There are already people in North Evanston looking to oust Biss in the next mayoral election.)
The Chicago Tribune has (another) editorial in favor of the project today, calling this the mother of all NIMBY fights.
It appears the Evanston City Council tabled the motions on the stadium project until next week.
Mike Nolan
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2023/11/13/guest-essay-it-was-never-about-six-concerts/
This was an interesting OpEd saying NU was disingenuous with their plans. It is rare for me to root for the Evanstoners, but in this case “three cheers”.
It is crazy to think that they could still make the timeline for 2026 opening based on this late date.