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Cal Having Financial Difficulties w Football Renovations?

Given that we have been having extensive discussions on our athletic facilities, this article from the WSJ from few days ago is relevant. Cal is getting it's stadium upgrade but according to this report they are having some issues:

Until now, the years-old effort to renovate the school's football stadium, which sits on an earthquake fault line, never raised many alarms. Although its $321 million price tag would make it one of the most expensive renovations in college sports history, the university said the project would be funded privately, largely through long-term seat sales and naming rights.

But three years into the fund-raising effort, the school was far from its goal of raising $270 million from the sale of seats. At the end of December, the school had collected $31 million in cash. It had secured another $113 million in long-term seat agreements, the majority of which will be paid over 30 years and all of which are nonbinding. In recent interviews, university officials acknowledge that if revenue projections fall short and won't cover the bond payments, the shortfall "would have to come from campus."

The figures were modified through the following correction at the end of the piece:

The University of California-Berkeley always intended to borrow most of the $474 million needed to renovate its football stadium and build an athlete-training facility. An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that Cal was taking on more debt than originally planned. Also, in noting that Cal had raised $31 million of a proposed $270 million endowment for the stadium, the article failed to mention that the school had gained nonbinding commitments of an additional $113 million, the majority of which will be paid over 30 years. In addition, in 1975, California and UCLA shared the Pac-8 football title. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said California won the title outright.

So keep that in mind when you read through the whole piece. What was not disputed in the corrected graf was the part of the report that Cal was also going to draw money for its stadium from "from campus funds, which include student fees." It's a situation to keep an eye on as we keep discussing our situation under Chianti Dan's boondoggle in Westwood.

Note: Cal fans - who are lurking - please feel free to chime and provide more context in this thread. Last thing we want is to turn this into a lame Cal-UCLA flamewar we see on message boards. Thanks.

GO BRUINS.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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