A big issue in the planning and construction of the magnificent IPF was site selection. The administration had to weigh several possible locations with pros and cons for each. A location out on South Milledge would have allowed for a sprawling complex with plenty of room for growth, but as we saw in 2016 it was no fun moving daily practice miles from the rest of the training facilities. Potential locations on campus eliminated logistical problems, but cramped real estate required the loss of practice fields or even campus buildings.

Georgia eventually settled on an on-campus location adjacent to the Butts-Mehre building. It cost the football program some outdoor practice space and some headaches with temporary practice fields during construction, but in the end it seems to have been a successful project that benefits the entire athletic department. We moved on to the next project, the west endzone of Sanford Stadium, to bring recruiting and locker room facilities up to par. That’s just about wrapped up, so what’s next?

Seth Emerson’s recent Mailbag (subscription required) gets us thinking again about the room available for future athletics projects. Emerson identifies several football-related projects that might go on a facilities master plan. There’s a need for a larger weight room that can accomodate the entire team. There’s no training table facility. Office space for an expanded staff is also tight. The location of the IPF worked well for its purpose, but it means that the Butts-Mehre building can’t really expand outward. Could it grow vertically? Probably not, but you’d have to ask the structural engineers.

Emerson mentions the possibility of an annex near Stegeman Coliseum, and that might be a location he brought up three years ago. When locations for the IPF were kicked around, the land containing the Hoke Smith buildings and parking lot was one of the options. That’s roughly the rectangle bordered by Lumpkin Street, the Georgia Center Hotel, Stegeman Coliseum, and the existing practice fields. The trick with using that area remains the same: you’d incur the additional costs of relocating those academic facilities and have some additional political wrangling to do since those buildings house state 4-H and CES services.

If that location does become available, it’s certainly a sizeable and centrally-located plot of land that could house an impressive training facility with a large weight room, dining, and medical training areas. Alabama is opening its own new “sports and nutrition” facility soon. At Georgia, office and conference space could be included as part of a comprehensive “football building”, or you could repurpose space in Butts-Mehre once the weight room is relocated. If you’d prefer to keep all football activites attached to the IPF, you could use the Hoke Smith land to build a new facility just for athletics administration while completely refurbishing the Butts-Mehre site for football. It’s just money, right?

While we’re thinking about football facilities, Seth reminds us that any master plan should seek input from every sport. The indoor tennis facility is already slated to be replaced. Can much more be done to Stegeman Coliseum? The Coliseum Training Facility was state-of-the-art when it opened, but that opening was 11 years ago. Foley Field received a minor upgrade within the past couple of years, but significant expansion is constrained by its location. Those are just a handful of Georgia’s sports programs, but what they have in common is competition for space within the Vince Dooley Athletic Complex on campus. The scarcity of land within that area only strengthens Emerson’s point that development within this area has to be approached strategically with a master plan. The haphazard planning that led UGA to scrap Butts-Mehre improvements five years after completion won’t cut it.