This Thursday, City of Tallahassee and Leon County Commissioners will meet again as the board of the Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency to vote on FAMU President Larry Robinson’s urgent request for $10 million to make critical repairs to Bragg Memorial Stadium. Without the funding, FAMU would likely not be able to use the 67-year-old stadium for the 2021 football season.
A report from Barkley Consulting Engineers (BCE) provided to FAMU, the City and County officials, outlined the dire condition of the stadium. In a letter dated July 2, 2020, BCE, states that Bragg Stadium had deteriorated faster than (previously) anticipated and that its steel floor decking desperately needs replacing, and that the press box was nearly unusable, and that restrooms need to be brought up to ADA code.
At the July Blueprint meeting, the majority of the Blueprint Board, with the exception of City Commissioner Curtis Richardson and Leon County Commissioner Kristin Dozier, voiced their support for FAMU’s request before eventually passing the buck to the staff for further review.
While the Blueprint staff’s “mealy mouthed” report made no clear recommendations, a study by the Tallahassee/Leon County Office of Economic Vitality and the Leon County Division of Tourism, suggested that "in a typical year, a FAMU football season (in the MEAC) brings in more than $7.3m in direct spending from fans visiting from areas outside of Leon County. Looking at future trends, as FAMU moves to the SWAC conference and if it completes the proposed stadium upgrades, an estimated $1.8m will be added to the annual economic impact of a FAMU football season. In summary, the total economic impact of a season of FAMU football would be over $11.5 million (annually)."
Bragg Stadium is clearly a community asset to Tallahassee/Leon County, and that without FAMU home football games that $7.5m- $11.5m would be removed from the local economy. With the racial strife currently going on in the City/County, and COVID-19, these are clearly uncertain times both socially and economically. By partnering with FAMU to make the necessary repairs to Bragg Stadium, Tallahassee/Leon County could eliminate the additional economic uncertainty that would result from the loss of FAMU's ability to host home football games. Rattler football, through the years, has been a source of stable and dependable revenue for Leon County, and with the repairs can remain so well into the future.
Considered another way, an improved Bragg Stadium would be the gift that keeps on giving and is deserving of the public investment from Blueprint.
FAMU has been a good neighbor to Tallahassee/Leon County and an important economic driver and hasn’t asked for much in return.
FAMU’s request is not without precedent. In September 2018, Blueprint approved a $20 million request by Florida State University for a convention center to connect to the FSU Turnbull Center and the FSU owned Civic Center. Those funds were scheduled to be released this year. However, by March (2020) Blueprint learned that the price tag for the convention center project had more than doubled to $53 million.
FSU was already in line for a $66 million taxpayer-funded access road near the university's southern border, along Lake Bradford Rd, that would tie the campus with the Tallahassee International Airport and the FSU SW Campus at Innovation Park.
Blueprint will pay $63 million of the road cost, with FSU chipping in only $3 million.
The new road plan has angered many Southside residents who fear that their neighborhood would be decimated.
It is not lost on any of us, that the Blueprint funded $52 million FAMU Way, which FAMU initially opposed, was a Seminole Booster backed thoroughfare, whose sole purpose is to move traffic out of FSU's Doak Campbell Stadium after football games faster, after the City redesigned Gaines Street (which supports Seminole Boosters' College Town) from four lanes to two and diverted stadium traffic to Orange Ave and Capitol Circle SW via Lake Bradford Rd forcing longer commute times for game fans who live north of town.
FAMU's request is reasonable, and relatively cheap considering the number of FSU funded request Blueprint has rushed to fund.
As Commissioners heard in July, the urgency to do this real. Commissioners, and Blueprint, should move with haste to approve FAMU's request on Thursday.