UT Board of Regents approves DKR renovation project

The "Bowl" might finally be completed at DKR Texas Memorial Stadium.

Thursday, the UT board of Regents approved the $175 million project for renovations.

The south end zone is where these renovations will be taking place. "A great day for Texas football and a great day for our university. It's awesome pretty excited," said Chris Del Conte, the athletic director, when he heard the board’s decision.  

Read UT Regents to consider 'completing the bowl' at DKR stadium

In a meeting on Thursday, UT president Gregory Fenves went before the UT board of regents to explain the need for renovating and adding onto DKR stadium.

"A major renovation has long been needed for Longhorn football in order to recruit and support our student athletes at the elite level," said Fenves

The addition to the stadium consists of new facilities especially for the student athletes.

"We're looking at a building that was built for John Mackovic, which was in 1995 when we hired Mack Brown he was in the process of building it and was either just finishing or just being completed when he got here so the facility is pretty inadequate," said Del Conte.

The other move in this project is to get rid of the current bleacher seating on the south end zone side and replace them with what they call premium seating, suits and clubs.

When it's all said and done, Fenves says they should have roughly the same number of seats as before at around 101,000. When the floor was open up for questions, it wasn't long before some asked how this would compare to their longtime rivals the Aggies. Texas A&M recently completed renovations to their football stadium Kyle field which bumped up their capacity to more than 102,500.  

According Del Conte, they are choosing to focus on quality. "It's not about the size of the stadium it's the experience people are asking. You're asking people to come down here have low seating, suit seating, a completely different experience that they want to have and be apart and that's really what stadiums are doing today," said Del Conte.

The board was on the same page of this play book as they voted unanimously in favor of the project. $125 million of the $175 million for the project the school plans to have will be covered by gifts. So far, they have received around $80-million.

The project is estimated to be completed by summer of 2021.