2018 Fightin Texas Aggie Baseball

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Our group was about 10 folks, all regular season ticket holders, save one, who has been on the list to buy. No TMF rep, just a girl that works for the consulting firm. They did some groups yesterday, and were doing a group of club seat people later in the day.

She had a power point presentation that had a bit more detail than in the email survey images you've seen on this thread, and did go through it, but most of the time was spent listening to us.

First thing she asked was what we liked and didn't like about the current park, and, as you would expect, there was a lot of Levy talk. Then, she went through the renderings, starting with the diamond club. Everyone there made clear their adamant opposition to reseating, and the rep was ready for this with some talking points. First, as to expansion of the club, the only thing they appear to be contemplating is converting 109 and possibly 105 to club seats. My wording there is deliberate--the slide they showed highlighting the expansion actually only showed 109 and NOT 105. She let us know that there research indicated that they could sell as many as 800 additional club seats, which no one doubted, but it was kind of odd that they would point out how much demand there was, but then limit it to one section. Apparently, this is because someone is aware of how much blowback they would get from a stadium wide reseating. In fact, on that issue, the rep suggested that they might not reseat the entire stadium, but, rather, just the folks displaced from the affected sections. When we pointed out that there were some club seat holders who might be forced out of the club in a reaseating, she said that the club would not be reseated. Now, obviously,what she says isn't gospel, and, in fact, the truth could be the opposite, but it was interesting that she didn't think the club seats would be up for grabs, that they would essentially be grandfathered.

Working around clockwise, there was no surprise on the additional seating down where the west lawn is right now: it would be 600 or so armchair seats. There would be a bridge over the bullpen. She was a little muddled on this, but it seems that the mounds would be in the open area, but the area under the bridge would be used for stretching and have an opening that allows the bullpen crew to see the field.

The outfield club would have a lttle over 100 seats, and possibly a couple of hundred memberships not tied to seats. They wanted to know our interest in that. No one in our group wantd to move their seats, and there was maybe one person interested in an outfield club membership not tied to reseating. On the question of alcohol sales in general seating, I was surprised that the group as a whole was pretty negative about alcohol sales. It might be an anomaly, or it might be an indication that the general ticket holder population isnt that interested in alcohol sales.

On the left field tailgate boxes, they werent sure if folks would be allowed to bring in their own food to cook on the grills, or would have to order it from Levy. We told her that they wouldn't sell even one of these if Levy supplied the food. They also see football tailgating being a selling point. The supposed goal of this seating was to try to bring back something like the old Aggie Alley. We pointed out that the folks who populated Aggie Alley were not exactly premuim seating customers, and that if they wanted some outfield atmosphere, the should build some bleachers in the outfield instead.

In centerfield, a structure would be built for concessions and restrooms that would also serve as the batter's eye. The visitors bullpen would be next, with the concourse continiung around it. In fact, the drawings contemplate having bar style ledges around the pen, sort of like what we used to have behind the top row of first deck seating immediately before the renovation.

Next, would be a general admission seating berm in straightaway right. They made a point of saying that this area would not block the view of the train. The drawing, which appears on this thread, shows a mix of sloped berm (what we have now), and terraced berm, which a number of other SEC parks have. The thinking on the terraced berms is that folks would be able to bring in bag chairs.

Moving on around, the play area would see little or no change, but, based on focus groups they did with students in March, they are contemplating turning the east lawn into a terraced berm for students only. We expressed some concern about efforts to provide student only seating (everyone wanted to keep students in 202 and 203, which I presume will still be the case), but the rep claimed that students told them they wanted thir own area where they would feel less inhibited and not have to fight with families for seats.

The idea of terracing the berms and allowing folks to bring in bag chairs seems like a real positive development, but I am a little sceptical about the seperate area for students. The group unanimously expressed their desire not to have more of the upper deck seating converted to reserved seating---the consensus was that the 600 seats down the left field line would serve that. Regarding the concern of individual ticket purchasers wanting real seats rather than berms, the rep suggested that other schools (in other sports) sometimes hold out some seats sor individual game sales, but none of us saw that being a possibility at Olsen.

I'm sure I left some stuff out, but i think that is a pretty good rundown.

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