New guest amenities were unveiled Wednesday morning at Finley Stadium ahead of the BlueCross Bowl, a state championship high school football event expected to bring in more than 30,000 people over three days.
The three spaces — a Calming Corner, a mother’s room and an upgraded first aid room — aim to improve accessibility at the stadium. Finley Stadium partnered with Erlanger Health on the $50,000 project.
“Health care just doesn’t happen in the hospital, it happens where people are,” Erlanger CEO Jim Coleman said to a small group at Finley Stadium on Wednesday.
Finley Stadium Executive Director Brian Wright led a tour of the new amenities, beginning with the Calming Corner in the south concourse at Section 110. The room that was once home to a 700-pound safe is now filled with fidget toys, sensory bubble tubes and soft furniture — a refuge from the commotion for people with sensory challenges.
Stadium officials selected the items based on pages of recommendations given to them from the Children’s Hospital at Erlanger.
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“This is kind of a newer trend in stadiums and arenas,” Wright said. “With how much they’re dealing with flashing lights and loud noises, sensory overload when you go to a sporting event.”
Wright was inspired by a similar project he’d done while working at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
He next led the group to the new mother’s room — formerly a ticket booth — in the elevator lobby at the stadium’s south entrance. The room now has a blue baby changing table, a recliner and a television.
“When we’d have a mother come to us that needed to breastfeed or something, we’d have to take her up to a sky box because we just didn’t have a good place for that,” Wright said. “So that’s been a need for a while.”
Both the mother’s room and Calming Corner will be decorated with murals by Chattanooga artist Olivia Reckert over the winter.
Wright led the group finally to the upgraded first aid room, which has always existed, but has been refurbished to “recreate more of the doctor’s office feel.” It’s in the south concourse as well.
The stadium is also launching its Morning Pointe stadium shuttle Thursday, a six-seater golf cart that will roam the stadium’s campus, picking up and dropping people off.
Wright hopes the amenities not only improve the game day experience for fans already coming to the stadium, but also draw people to Finley Stadium who wouldn’t have attended before.
“I think once we publicize this and it’s well-known, all of a sudden there is a whole new group of folks that will be coming to events here,” he said.
Contact Cameron McKeon at cmckeon@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6315.
