Reaching the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs and the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments for the first time in the same school year is something University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director David Blackburn hopes to put to good financial use.
Tennessee's five-member State Building Commission last week gave UTC the go-ahead to start planning an $18.5 million multipurpose athletic facility that would adjoin McKenzie Arena. Now Blackburn wants to be as effective in fundraising the next few months as he's been in hiring coaches such as Will Wade, Jim Foster and Matt McCall.
"We need to raise between $8 million to $10 million privately, which we're on our way to doing," Blackburn said Monday afternoon. "We've got to present to the state building commission a funding model to cap it off before they will assign an architect and a contractor. I think within another year that we will have the money in place, but it may take a little longer than that.
"Obviously if we can stay successful and keep doing well, it will help speed that along."
Blackburn said the new facility will have 35,000 square feet over four floors and added that 25,000 square feet of existing space inside McKenzie will be remodeled as well. There will be a UTC Hall of Fame at the current Gate 1 area, and the new facility will contain academic services, team meeting rooms and sports medicine areas for all athletes and not just football players.
The addition will match the design of the new library, according to Blackburn, and improve the campus look.
"The arms race of the facilities has bled into the FCS area, and we probably have the best in our league," said Blackburn, who was a guest on "Press Row" on Chattanooga's ESPN 105.1 FM. "We're the only school in our league that doesn't have a facility where our student-athletes can spend 90 percent of their time.
"This is the only piece we need to cap things off."
Blackburn came to UTC in 2013 after serving as the senior associate athletic director at Tennessee. One of his responsibilities in Knoxville was overseeing the design and construction of the $48 million Anderson Training Center, which contains 145,000 square feet and has an amphitheater meeting room for the football team, coaching offices, a 22,000-square-foot weightroom and a 7,000-square-foot locker room.
Much of his next few months with UTC will be consumed with not only fundraising but putting the final plans on the functionality of the facility.
"In the best-case scenario, and that's if someone dropped a ton of money on us, you're looking at two or three years," Blackburn said when asked about a completion date. "If we have trouble raising money, it will obviously take longer, but if we continue to do well, three years is not out of the question."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.