Meeting with reporters this winter, Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft described the moment of realization with Beaver Stadium. What had been a project taking up significant time and energy to get off the ground, rallying support and organizing designs on a $700 million revitalization project, had finally come to fruition in January.
“We were at the [Chicago outdoor game] in hockey. I flew back, got back at two in the morning. I’m getting home and we’ve got that blizzard. I was like, ‘Man, I bet there’s going to be nobody here to watch [the press box demolition],” said Kraft. “And sure as heck, there’s 400 people there. That’s why I love this place. The fans are so passionate. Then when it fell down, I’m like, ‘Oh boy. This is real.’”
Monday, two new updates from the Penn State athletic department offered milemarkers for the progress made on the project thus far.As explained by Mauti, over 60,000 square feet in diameter of concrete will be put into the ground with over 1,200 micropiles due to be installed. And, critically, the entire footprint of the west side stadium project is expected to be finished by late-August, clearing the way for temporary seating at the start of the Nittany Lions’ 2025 football season.We’ll have temp seating. Think of Northwestern a little bit, how they built that stadium on the lake. Or if you go to the Waste Management Open, they built that stadium around [hole] 16. Those are the folks that are doing the production. You’ll see,” Kraft explained in February. “How do I best describe it? There’s that lip that we took the top part off. There will be bleachers; I think it’s 7,400 or so in that space. We’re looking to even see if we can add more seats to that. It’ll look very temporary.
