Who doesn’t love something shiny and new?
We admit the thought of a new University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football stadium on land the school owns, on grounds closer to the school, in a spot where students might support it better, on property that would pay homage to the history of the stadium it replaces, and with the ability to expand, is exciting.
Nothing – repeat, nothing – has been decided, drawn up, laid out or set in stone, but university officials have admitted they have begun thinking about the possibility of a new football venue on the site of Engel Stadium, which they own, for a variety of reasons.
One of those is money. In April, the corporately held Finley Stadium offered the school a five-year contract that would cost the school more than $1 million over five years, nearly twice the rate it currently pays. The school declined, opting instead for short-term deals with options to renew.
Add to that the fact the school gets no revenue from luxury suites, parking or concessions.
Then there’s soccer.
The sport that for 50 years has been proclaiming itself the fastest growing sport in the United States has finally found a following in the Scenic City. Some might call it a love affair. But now the relationship between soccer and Chattanooga, like many love affairs, has become complicated.
We won’t dwell on the potential side-by-side existence of two favored soccer squads that has cropped up this summer except to say that’s it’s clouded the Finley Stadium picture.
One team, the amateur Chattanooga Football Club, has been in existence since 2009, improved rapidly enough to make four trips to the national finals and drew a fan base at Finley Stadium that peaked in 2016 at nearly 5,000 fans per game.
Now, a second team, albeit a professional one, has said it will have a franchise here that will play in Division III of the new United Soccer League and that it, too, will call the Southside venue home.
Anyway you look at it, especially if you add the presence of the UTC women’s soccer team, it makes for a crowded house.
For the time being, though, UTC will call Finley home. It has nowhere else to go, and even if it started work on a new stadium at Third and O’Neal streets this fall, it would be the 2020-2021 season or later before it could play there.
And where would the school look for money to finance it?
UTC itself doesn’t have the wherewithal to plunk down the cost of a new stadium, though it contributed a little more than 10 percent ($2.9 million) of the cost of $28.5 million Finley Stadium.
It’s not likely to come from state funds, though the state did kick in 12.3 percent ($3.5 million) for Finley. And Chattanooga and Hamilton County probably feel like they did their part by contributing a combined $13 million (about 45.6 percent) of the cost of the 21-year-old stadium. They might feel especially reticent with burgeoning discussions about potential partial public financing of a minor league baseball park as part of a revitalized Wheland Foundry/U.S. Pipe property.
Plus, the largesse of the family of the late W. Max Finley and that of the late Gordon Davenport, whose contributions helped created the football stadium, is unlikely to be repeated by their families or others.
Reality, then, tells us a new football venue on the site of Engel Stadium is improbable, though not impossible, in the near future.
And whether Chattanooga could support two soccer teams, one already with a following and one that is in a professional league, remains to be seen. Soccer has grown in popularity, but we’re not sure it’s grown enough for that kind of support. Our guess is that, one way or the other, that problem will work itself out.
If the problem didn’t work itself out soon enough, one of the two soccer teams could potentially, though not easily, find another venue or venues.
In the end, we hope UTC can work out a contract renewal with The Stadium Corp., which runs Finley. Finley is a wonderful football venue in the increasingly bustling Southside. It is easy to access and has a good deal of close parking. And paying $12,000 a month is preferable to attempting to finance a new stadium for – dare we guess? – $50 million or more.
We’d love to see a shiny, new stadium erected in a place that has baseball memories for many Chattanoogans but wonder if the recent talk of such isn’t just a stalking horse for a better deal at Finley. Whether it is or isn’t, we hope all parties can work out an amicable arrangement for what we believe is still a viable, venerable venue.