$155M Plan For Maryland Football Facility OK'ed
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) -- A University of Maryland Board of Regents committee has unanimously approved a $155 million plan to transform Cole Field House into an indoor football practice facility more in line with other schools in the Big Ten.
The plan, approved Thursday by the board's finance committee, calls for the storied facility to be gutted largely for the football practice facility, a move the school's athletic department sees as necessary to fully integrate the football team into the Big Ten, which it recently joined.
The university is the only school in the conference without an indoor practice facility.
"We are in the football business. That's the choice that was made," said Tom McMillen, a board member and a 2013 inductee in the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, according to The Washington Post. "We need to make it work, and so we have to be competitive."
The plan still needs approval of the full Board of Regents, which is set to take up the issue at its meeting in Hagerstown on Dec. 12.
If approved, construction would start no sooner than December 2015 and should be finished by June 2018.
Private donations would fund $105 million of the $155 million price tag, including a pledge of $25 million from Under Armour founder Kevin Plank.
The rest would be paid by the school and the state.
Cole Field House was home to the university's basketball team from 1955 to 2002, and has hosted the likes of Elvis and the U.S.-China ping-pong match in 1972.
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