Steve Jones

@stevejones_cj

The University of Louisville announced Thursday that it's officially kicking off a capital fundraising campaign for its previously announced plans to expand Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, and U of L's administrators said they are confident they have the level of fan support and enough big Atlantic Coast Conference games in the future to fill it up repeatedly.

The project, which athletic director Tom Jurich said "will be a real crown jewel," is expected to cost $55 million and would include a 10,000-seat expansion in the currently open north end of the stadium, bringing total capacity to 65,000, as well as a major renovation and expansion of the Howard Schnellenberger Football Complex.

Jurich, who first announced plans for expansion in August, said a timeline for the project will be dependent on fundraising, but ideally the expansion will be completed in time for the Cardinals' 2019 season opener against Notre Dame, though he'd like to have it done in 2018 if possible. Jurich said the construction work itself would take two years.

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Senior associate athletic director Mark Jurich, who is Tom's son, announced that U of L has received two major corporate contributions to start the job: $5 million from Pepsi for naming rights to a new club area that is part of the expansion and $3 million from Planet Fitness.

Tom Jurich doesn't anticipate receiving any public money to pay for the project.

The seating expansion includes 1,000 new club seats, 70 premium boxes and – perhaps the most posh addition – 12 field-level suites. All of the new seats – like the rest of the stadium – will have chairbacks.

The design also calls for two large video boards, similar in size to the one currently raised above the north end zone, to be displayed on towers that will flank both sides of the new seating structure, which forms a triangular shape similar to the one in an end zone of the Seattle Seahawks' stadium. U of L researched the Seattle stadium and the Dallas Cowboys' stadium to get ideas on the expansion.

"There's going to be a lot of amenities in this project. Most of times you see an end-zone (expansion) it's just bowling it in with bench seats," Tom Jurich said. "This is going to have everything, every bell and whistle."

U of L has created a website – ComingFullCircle.com – for information on the project for interested donors and fans, and fans are encouraged to call the Cardinal Athletic Fund office at (502) 852-8921. Specific pricing for the various new seats and suites is still being determined, Mark Jurich said.

Mark Jurich said they received "overwhelming support" from boosters during a gathering Wednesday night to discuss the project and debut a high-definition video (see embedded) with renderings of the expanded stadium.

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College football attendance nationally has dropped for five straight years, and U of L's average home attendance this past season was 49,069, down 7 percent from 2014.

Mark Jurich said he has had some concern about declining attendance across the nation, but in gauging interest in the U of L community and fan base, he believes the expansion is appropriate and works for the Cards' growing program.

"We would not do this project if we didn't feel this was feasible or didn't make a lot of sense for us," Tom Jurich said.

The Cards, who began the past season 0-3, had two home games with an announced attendance less than 50,000, including a season-low 41,186 for the 17-14 win over Boston College, which had rainy weather, a 12:30 p.m. start and featured, at the time, two losing teams. A third-week Thursday night game against Clemson, which drew 55,396, was U of L's only full capacity crowd in 2015.

"You're always going to have those ebbs and flows," Tom Jurich said. "The thing we're looking at is we want to make sure we're prepared for when the big games are here and the games that are extremely important to our fan base, because we know they are always going to come out and want to be a part of it. In recruiting, certainly it's an arms race. We know that, and we can't hide from that. We wanted to make sure we were very smart in the way we did it. I did not want to go backward. I wanted to go forward and be progressive, and that helps us a lot.

"With our new conference, though, I think we're going to have so many great opportunities to fill this stadium that it's going to pay many, many, many dividends."

Tom Jurich said U of L's move to the ACC makes expanding the stadium sensible and that if the Cards were still in the American Athletic Conference "we'd be putting this on hold."

"I think the ACC has been an incredible shot in the arm for this entire community for us, and it's certainly exceeded all our expectations," he said. "The great thing about the ACC is it's really fueled our fan base."