CSU’s new on-campus football stadium generated millions of dollars more in its first season of operation than projected, strengthening confidence university officials have about the facility's long-term financial outlook.

The Rams recently completed their first season in the $220 million stadium following years of planning and at times heated community debate. Many concerns critics raised about traffic, parking and disruptive behavior related to Colorado State University football's move from Hughes Stadium to the middle of Fort Collins were averted by operational plans refined over the span of more than five years.

“I think this year, in particular, the stadium will spin off excess revenue beyond expenses and projected expenses somewhere in the millions of dollars above what we have typically enjoyed,” CSU President and Chancellor Tony Frank told the Coloradoan.

Construction of the stadium and the first two years of interest payments were funded through the sale of revenue bonds totaling $239 million. CSU is counting on new revenue streams created by the facility to cover annual bond payments. Debt-service payments on bonds sold to fund stadium construction are $7.63 million this year and increase slightly through 2020 before maxing out at $12.18 million annually from 2021-2055.

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Donor pledges, which total $60 million, and any profits the university earns from the development or sale of the 160 acres on which Hughes Stadium sits, are being placed in a "rainy day" fund to cover a potential shortfall in any years in which the stadium doesn't generate enough revenue to cover the annual bond payments.

Early estimates valued the Hughes land at more than $10 million, after deducting the $3 million or so that must be spent to demolish the 32,500-seat stadium 3 miles west of campus where CSU played home football games from 1968-2016.

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“We always felt good about that model,” Frank said. “That was what allowed us and, I think, allowed the (Board of Governors) to feel good going forward is that we had a very nice reserve. We had budgeted around a conservative model. Are you going to hit even the conservative number every 40 years? I’m a Cubs fan; a bad century can happen now and then.

“But, in general, if the team performs well and we did our due diligence around that, I think we’ll be very pleased with how that model performs. And whoever is lucky enough to be in the chair I occupy now 40 years from now, my goal is for them to have a sizable pot of funds remaining in that reserve for them to deploy for the best interests of the university.”

A significant amount of planning went into the project, and officials with the city of Fort Collins and residents of surrounding neighborhoods were pleasantly surprised with how things went.

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“It’s not as bad as it might have been,” said Alan Lamborn, a resident of the nearby Sheely Addition neighborhood.

CSU averaged 32,065 fans, a school record, for its six home games at the new stadium, which has 36,500 seats and total capacity of 41,000. Luxury suites and loge boxes sold out last spring, with purchasers required to commit to three-, five- or seven-year contracts. The university also sold out all 1,200 memberships ($200 each) on the New Belgium Porch, a party deck in the north end zone, along with all 600 memberships ($400 each) available for the Orthopaedic & Spine Center of the Rockies Field Club behind the home team’s bench.

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Season-ticket sales hit an all-time high of 15,477, up 40 percent from last year's 11,046, with about 1,000 more fans purchasing three-game mini-plans, and student attendance increased 15 percent — from an average of 6,494 a game in 2016 to 7,455 at the new stadium, said Chris Ferris, the university's senior associate athletic director for sales, marketing and communications.

CSU is also earning money from renting out parts of the stadium for events other than games, such as wedding receptions, banquets, corporate retreats and holiday parties. There were 130 such events scheduled from July 1 through Dec. 31, deputy athletic director Steve Cottingham said. A report on rental revenue generated by the stadium has not been finalized, CSU officials said.

“We will operate with a significant surplus this year on what’s required for debt service,” athletic director Joe Parker said.

Projections in a 2012 study commissioned by CSU on the feasibility of building the new stadium had the university earning net revenue of $6.35 million to $11.32 million in the first year of operation, $6.92 million to $12.2 million in Year 2 and as much as $29.43 million annually in the 30th year of operation.

CSU's annual revenue at Hughes Stadium was $3.6 million.

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Bills are still coming in through the end of this month, Cottingham said, so the university doesn't yet have a final figure on expenses incurred during the stadium's first season of use.

Fort Collins Police Services, Transfort and others are working through the process of determining how much they’re owed by the university for additional resources provided on game days. Fort Collins police expect to bill the university a little more than $90,000 per game, up about 28.5 percent from the $70,000 per game it was paid for the use of its officers and resources for games at Hughes, Lt. Jim Byrne said.

Those bills are due by the end of this month, Cottingham said, and will be reviewed and paid in January and February. A detailed balance sheet on stadium revenue and expenses will be shared annually with the university’s Board of Governors and the public until all the stadium bonds have been paid off, Frank said. He expects to make the first report available at the BOG's May 2-3 meetings in Fort Collins.

While final revenue figures aren't yet available, there are other signs that the stadium at minimum hasn't harmed CSU's financial position.

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Moody’s affirmed the university’s strong bond rating earlier this month, assigning the same Aa3 rating for two new bond sales that it had given to the stadium bonds when they were issued March 19, 2015. They were all sold in less than 90 minutes, a school spokesman said, and certain series of bonds within the package were as much as three times oversubscribed. The true interest rate of the stadium bonds, counting the fees to issue them, is 3.57 percent.

Aside from the financial feasibility of the project, there were little to no traffic issues, parking problems, out-of-control tailgate parties before games or wild mob scenes afterward that were feared from residents near and far from the stadium.

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Fort Collins Police Lt. Jerry Schiager, city traffic engineer Joe Olson and Emily Allen, interim director of neighborhood services for the city, all said their departments were prepared to deal with a wide range of problems that never materialized, Schiager and Allen said. Fans were generally well-behaved and respected the neighborhoods surrounding campus and CSU, officials said.

“With the controversy that did surround it, you want to dampen expectations a little bit,” Frank said. “And we went into this year saying, ‘OK, we’ve done everything that we can to assure that there aren’t problems. But let’s be realistic, problems could arise.’

“And I think, in part because of that, we planned so hard and worked so hard around it that we were just very, very pleased that none of those problems arose, and it exceeded all of our expectations, at least mine, on every front.”

Assumptions planners made about the number of fans who would walk, bicycle and use public transportation, including the MAX, to get to games were “pretty much as we expected,” Olson said. That meant there were far fewer vehicles on the roads around the stadium than critics had feared and more than enough parking spaces to accommodate those who did drive.

Parker said CSU sold season parking passes for 90 percent of the spaces available on campus. In-game audits showed many were only 50 percent full, he said. Only about 1,000 of the 2,000 spaces available for cash parking on game days on CSU’s south campus, near the intersection of Centre Avenue and Research Boulevard, were used, campus planner Fred Haberecht said.

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There are 35,000 to 40,000 people on CSU’s campus daily during the school year, Haberecht said, so the university is designed to handle the kind of a crowds a football game brings.

“The plan developed, for the most part, mirrored the behavior,” Haberecht said. “A lot of people did walk and bike and take transit to the games as anticipated and as infrastructure was built to accommodate. If everyone who went to a game had tried to drive to the game, that would have been a different outcome.”

One surprise, Schiager said, was the number of fans who used ride-sharing services, such as Lyft and Uber, to get to and from the games. The university originally designated the University Center for the Arts, a block east of College Avenue at Remington and Lake streets, as the drop-off and pick-up location. But some drivers were going around barricades on campus and in the Sheely neighborhood to get closer.

Three new drop-off and pick-up locations, including those near the stadium on Pitkin and Lake streets, were added during the season to handle the increased volume.

Minor modifications to the game-day operations plan took place throughout the season, officials said. Concession lines were more clearly demarcated with stanchions by the second game to reduce congestion on the concourses and long waits that fans grumbled about during the opening game. Plans will be tweaked again before the 2018 season based on what took place during the first year of operation.

CSU recently sent out a survey to season ticket-holders seeking their input.

Although CSU avoided what Parker called the kind of “car going off the road moments” that stadium critics had predicted, there were a few hiccups.

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Noise levels from the stadium’s public-address system and a cannon that shoots off a round every time the Rams score a field goal or touchdown were sometimes more audible in the surrounding neighborhoods than Frank would have liked. The sound seemed to carry more during night games later in the season, after most of the trees had lost their leaves, Lamborn said.

Decibel readings taken by city employees generally confirmed that, Allen said, although there were significant variations from one end of a block to another.

One game, on Nov. 11 against Boise State, didn’t end until 12:55 a.m.

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“I know there have been some complaints about the noise and whether the loudspeaker was too loud and whether it was louder at some games than others, and there’s probably environmental temperature factors that affect it,” Schiager said. “But I was in the Sheely neighborhood during the height of a couple of those games, and it was crickets. And that was the neighborhood everyone was so sensitive about.”

At the recommendation of a citizen advisory group that Lamborn, Schiager and a dozen others served on, CSU selected more-expensive distributive sound and directed lighting systems for the stadium in an effort to reduce “leakage” into surrounding neighborhoods.

Lamborn, CSU’s vice provost for undergraduate affairs, and many of his neighbors wish the stadium had never been built. But they’re thankful, he said, that many of their concerns were taken into account in the design and planning process.

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He also appreciated the heavy presence of police and employees from the city's neighborhood services office who were in his neighborhood before, during and after every game to monitor the behavior of fans heading to and from the stadium. In one instance, he said, police in the area were able to intervene before a pregame party on Whitcomb Street, just south of Prospect Road, got out of hand.

“The city deserves extraordinary kudos,” Lamborn said. “They had staff and volunteers out blanketing the main parts of the neighborhood to troubleshoot issues and to find out how things were going. They’re a presence, and the attitude of the people that have been there in terms of the desire to know what’s going on and to try to intervene if there are issues, has really been truly exceptional.”

Allen said most people understood parking restrictions that limited street parking in most neighborhoods adjacent to campus to the properly permitted vehicles of residents and their guests.

Still, the city issued 359 parking citations in neighborhoods with parking restrictions and towed 155 vehicles, a spokeswoman said.

The 25 employees from neighborhood services who were out on game days primarily reminded people of the city's open-container laws, Allen said. Those carrying backpacks or other large bags were warned about the stadium’s clear-bag policy.

“We didn’t have any littering issues, which I know a lot of people had major concerns about in the neighborhoods,” Allen said.

What everyone did see was a CSU campus that looks far different today than it did 20, 30 and 40 years ago. A campus that has been transformed through nearly $1.4 billion worth of capital improvements in the past 15 years.

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That was a big part of what Jack Graham, who championed the stadium project throughout his more than 2 ½ years as the Rams’ athletic director, and Frank were seeking. They didn’t just want to bring football games back to campus; they wanted to bring football fans and their families to campus.

“I think that exceeded every expectation, as well,” Frank said. “And for me, that was a big part of what the model and the investment was about, and it resonates with me personally because the first time I ever set foot on a college campus was for a football game. It was at Northwestern’s campus, and I was just blown away by the atmosphere of being at a college.

“I want that experience for everybody who comes to one of our games.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

CSU stadium financials

Cost: $220 million

Revenue bonds sold: $239 million

2017 debt service: $7.63 million increasing slightly through 2020

2021-2055 annual debt service: $12.18 million

Donor pledges: $60 million

Sale of Hughes Stadium land: Estimated at more than $10 million net

Stadium net revenue projections from 2012 study (low-end and base models): $6.35 million to $11.32 million in first year, $6.92 million to $12.2 million in Year 2 and as much as $29.43 million annually in the 30th year of operation in those projections.

2017 on-campus stadium revenue: Expected to be finalized for release at the CSU Board of Governors May 2-3, 2018, meetings in Fort Collins.