The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has received approval from the state to move forward with its plans to take down the South Stadium building at Chamberlain Field.
Dr. Richard Brown, UTC’s vice chancellor for finance and operations, said the Tennessee Historical Commission has given the university the go-ahead to “dismantle the building, and we probably will start that process this fall.”
To preserve the history of Chamberlain Field, the Mocs’ home football stadium from 1908 to ’97, UTC will reuse some of the architectural elements of the South Stadium, which was built in 1914.
The preliminary plans have those elements, including the entryway, being incorporated into an area that will be called the Chamberlain Pavilion, which will be a gateway on the east end of Chamberlain Field, Brown said.
“It will actually appear like you’re going into a stadium on the east end of the field. We’ll capture that same feel,” he said.
Scrappy Moore Jr., a UTC graduate and son of the legendary longtime Mocs coach, said Chamberlain Field was special to him and thousands of others who knew it as the heart of campus.
“Everybody remembers it for a lot of reasons, but especially the students there who gathered at it as a meeting place, the commons, for so many years,” Moore said. “If they could preserve just an entrance or something, it would be wonderful.”
The pavilion will be constructed at the opposite end of the field from the $48 million library that is under construction.
“As the new library is built, that library will have kind of a portico that also opens up onto Chamberlain Field,” Brown said. “You’ll have this new pavilion on one end and this beautiful library on the other.”
In between will be green space that can be used for anything from poetry readings to picnics to tossing a football around.
The dismantling project must be put up for bid and will require the approval of the State Building Commission. Brown said he’s hopeful that can be done in the next 45 days, with work beginning in late October or November.
UTC has $500,000 set aside for the dismantling and other aspects of the project. The pavilion’s construction will require additional funding, possibly from stimulus funds and private donations.
Brown said several thousand bricks from the South Stadium may be saved and auctioned off, with the money going to the athletic department.