STARKVILLE — All that’s left to do is the graphics on the wall.
Workers were installing the final finishing touches such as those wall graphics when Mississippi State showed media the new recruiting suite and locker room in Davis Wade Stadium. It is the completion of a $3.6 million project for an 11,100 square-foot locker room and over 3,000 square feet in the recruiting lounge.
“Certainly the project had been in the works prior to our arrival, but Mr. (Director of Athletics John) Cohen, (chief financial officer) Jared Benko and everybody else in our athletic department did a great job in the planning, the organization and the execution of it,” MSU coach Joe Moorhead said on the Southeastern Conference teleconference. “Andrew Warsaw, our director of football operations, had a hand in the project, as well.
“In the arms race that is facilities in this conference, if you’re standing still you’re falling back, and surely the new locker room and the new recruiting lounge give us an opportunity to put our best foot forward in those areas.”
Ches Fedric, a senior project manager or ICM, the construction manager of the project, told The Dispatch work began in February or March and both rooms were constructed simultaneously.
“It was a quick-hitter project,” Fedric said.
Fedric said the challenging part for the locker room was installing a concrete slab, as that space underneath the north end zone seats built in 2013 was left as gravel. Fedric said the construction crews had to bring a hose through the electrical room to lay the slab.
In the recruiting lounge, the primary challenge was the demolition, as that space used to be the visiting locker room.
“When these concrete walls run to the deck above and you’ve got all these utilities, you don’t just take a sledgehammer to it,” Fedric said. “You have to be tactful with the removal.”
Among the details coming to the recruiting lounge include a six-foot cowbell and a larger video screen in one wall; the lounge already has several other televisions on the walls and columns elsewhere in the room, but this one will be the largest and primary display.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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