Editorial: Northwestern’s new football stadium looks like a luxury game-day experience with unimpeachable funding

Thanks to the Chicago Bears and the perennial arguments over Soldier Field, conversations about stadiums and renovations are commonplace for us. But the plan put out in recent days by Northwestern University for a new Ryan Field in Evanston breaks the typical mold of these things in two fascinating ways.

One is that the proposal for what is essentially a new college football stadium in Evanston is fully funded with nary a dime, it seems, to be procured from the public purse. Thanks to the foundational largesse of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan family (insurance can be a profitable business), the cost of this massive Central Street, Evanston project — reportedly as high as an eye-popping $800 million — is to be fully funded by private donations.

Northwestern, always mindful of the political implications of these things, has been anxious to note that the stadium will not affect tuition costs or take away from faculty raises or scholarships or whatever. It’s touted as a self-contained venture. And assuming this is what the Ryan family specifically wanted to support, that would appear to be the case.

The second — equally striking — is that the stadium actually will have some 12,000 fewer seats. Instead of the current capacity of 47,130, the new Ryan Field will only seat about 35,000.

When did you last hear of a new stadium project designed to reduce capacity by some 25%? We can’t recall, either.

The architects of the new stadium, Kansas City sports architects HNTB, who’ve been quietly on this job for some time, were previously involved in the renovations of both the famed horseshoe at Ohio State and the Big House in Ann Arbor. For the record, the $226 million expansion of Michigan Stadium, completed in 2010, added a new tower with 83 suites and 3,200 club seats. Michigan Stadium seats 107,601. And in Columbus in 2019, HNTB helped Ohio State spend $42 million to add loge boxes. Ohio Stadium now seats 104,944.

And at the University of Nebraska, KNCB pushed the seating capacity up to 90,000 after a $64 million renovation.

In all those cases, the work was about renovation, but also about adding capacity and increasing the potential gross ticket sales.

Not only has Northwestern gone in precisely the opposite direction, but it has done so to a major extent. Building it 25% smaller amounts to far fewer fannies in seats, even if the old benches now will be seats with backs. Looking back at the various reports on these plans in professional publications, it looks like Northwestern first intended to redo the existing stadium and then switched gears and decided to start over.

Those with no love for purple will snicker that this small capacity (some 15,000 below the next-smallest Big Ten stadium) is a not-so-tacit self-acknowledgement of the limited appeal of Northwestern football, even in the decades to come. Unlike many of its Big Ten rivals, Northwestern rarely sells out and on the rare occasions when it does, the capacity crowd usually comes courtesy of the Chicago-based fans of the visiting team.

Certainly, this is an admirable and rare dose of realism since the improvements genuinely appear focused on improving the fan and student-player experience, and they’re clearly designed to match Northwestern’s brand as a private school with one foot in traditional Big Ten football madness (for those who wish to partake) and one foot in something more, well, refined.

If this plan were for a hotel, it would be for an upscale boutique operation designed to contrast with the huge, convention-oriented Marriott in that other college town. Ah, the luxury of lots of donated money.

The smaller capacity also is a mighty clever way to head off likely opposition in Evanston, notoriously known for NIMBY tendencies and for disapproving major development projects that bring traffic and crowds to residential areas. By reducing capacity, Northwestern effectively has blunted any possible opposition on those grounds from neighbors. The university also has promised to turn the new Ryan Field into a place that the community can use for various activities. There’s even what looks to be a lovely new public park alongside the stadium.

The only issue here is likely to be the university’s plan for an unspecified number of concerts in the new stadium, perhaps drawing concert business away from Wrigley Field. That will be subject to neighborhood scrutiny, we’ll wager, but there is precedent for concerts in this part of Evanston. The venue known as Space presented Elvis Costello in an outdoor setting this summer, not far from the stadium at the Canal Shores Golf Course. If Evanston can stand that “mini-Ravinia,” they probably can handle the likes of Billy Joel playing like a Wildcat on the piano.

And many neighbors likely will see these shows as a convenient amenity.

The original stadium was the work of the illustrious architect James Gamble Rogers, known as a master of so-called “collegiate gothic” and well represented at Yale University, too. But what is now Ryan Field has been messed around with plenty over its history so it’s hard to imagine too many lamenting its exit for something fresh. Whether the new building will end up being “architecturally significant,” as the university claims, remains to be seen.

But Northwestern fans will look forward, we bet, to hearing, “We’re going to ‘Move. Those. Chains.” ringing out in new digs.

Unlike deals where the Chicago Bears and other NFL and major league teams from other sports have requested all kinds of public largesse for their dreams, the Northwestern plan certainly is unimpeachable on financial grounds, and it sure looks like it will be a spectacular place to watch college football.

As notable philanthropic gifts in Chicagoland sports go, this one is a big deal.

And since stadiums take a while to build, maybe old Soldier Field is about to see more comings and goings than we thought.

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