Remember the Ala¬modome? Yes, it’s still standing, and a $60 million facelift ahead of this year’s NCAA Final Four brings the stadium up to the level of newer buildings competing for the event.
The dome opened its doors in May 1993, just eight months after the Georgia Dome opened. The Atlanta venue was recently demolished after Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened next door. In San Antonio, though, the Alamodome found new life. Multiple upgrades, completed in late 2017, give the facility a fresh look with wider concourses, new outdoor hospitality spaces and bigger video boards in the inner bowl. The building will seat 70,000 for the Final Four.
On the marketing side, for the first time, the city-owned venue has a long-term sponsorship program after leaving those deals up to promoters on a per-event basis. Pepsi, regional supermarket H-E-B and Universal Health System have all signed multiyear “Star Partner” deals valued at $300,000 annually.
Star Partners get naming rights and branding for the stadium’s four entrances. A fourth deal is pending in the beer, wine and spirits category, said Randy Bernstein, president and CEO of Premier Partnerships, the California firm selling sponsorships for the Alamodome.
Premier Partnerships is also searching for a naming-rights partner for the dome itself (see related story, Page 28), a deal that must be approved and signed by the city. Together, they hope to sign a 10- year deal valued at a minimum of $1 million annually, Bernstein said.
“They’ve left a lot of reve¬nue untapped in the past,” he said.
The work of bringing the building up to speed began more than five years ago, about the same time Nick Langella took over as GM after filling the same role at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis. At the time, the city of San Antonio hired Populous, the Alamodome’s original architect, to study what needed to be done for the stadium to meet NFL standards while local officials were pursuing a team.
As part of the 2012 study, Populous brought in its Denver-based events group, which the NCAA uses as a consultant for Final Four preparations, to help determine where the Alamodome fell short in its qualifications for the event, said Brady Spencer, a senior architect and principal with Populous who worked on the project.
The Rams moved to Los Angeles and the Raiders committed to Las Vegas, leaving San Antonio without the NFL tenant it was pursuing. But officials thought they could still attract the Final Four, where the dome had a proven track record, and potentially the College Football Playoff title game, plus international soccer, boxing and pro wrestling. One of WWE’s marquee events, the Royal Rumble, played the dome last year for the first time since 1997, Langella said.
“There were a number of things we wanted to do for attracting bigger events,” he said. “We had the Final Four in 2004 and 2008, and at that point, people realized the stadium needed to improve to reach a [higher] level that the NCAA felt comfortable with.”
For the Final Four, the bottom line was finding more open space inside the building to meet the NCAA’s requirements as that event has grown in scope over the past decade, Spencer said.
After the Populous study was completed, it sat on the shelf for about two years as the city focused on a much bigger project, the $325 million expansion of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, the site of the Final Four fanfest. The additions bring the convention center’s footprint much closer to the Alamodome. Nearby, Hemisfair Park, originally built for the 1968 World’s Fair, added more green space to hold the March Madness Music Festival concerts.
Three years ago, Populous officially won the bid to design the improvements. The Kansas City firm teamed with Marmon Mok Architecture, a local firm that also worked on the original job, and builder Turner Construction. PC Sports was the owner’s representative.
One part of the solution was to build a new multipurpose room at event level. For the Final Four, the 24,000-square-foot space will serve as the media work center, fully equipped to meet the needs of print, digital and broadcast outlets. To create that space, workers excavated about 20 feet below the dome at its north end, opposite the loading dock. An old fountain was torn down as part of that job, Langella said.
Spencer said, “That room is even better than what they have at a lot of the new facilities that got the Final Four. In a new stadium, they typically find the biggest storage room to fit the media.”
Separately, the concourses along the east and west sides were expanded outward, and doubled in width to 40 feet, with new concession stands incorporated into the new walls. It was a bit tricky to accomplish because the dome is wedged between railroad tracks and a highway, Spencer said.
“There’s limited real estate outside,” he said. “It was a game of inches for how far we could expand.”
As part of those redeveloped and bigger spaces, new outdoor terraces serve as beer gardens on event days. Combined, the two beer gardens can accommodate about 1,000 people, Langella said. SMG Savor operates those destinations as part of running the food operation.
Technology upgrades took up $15 million of the project cost. There are now Daktronics video boards in all four corners of the upper bowl, doubling the original number of screens. There’s a new LED ribbon board in the upper level and a new sound system in place.
The Valero Alamo Bowl, played every December at the dome, provided $6 million to the facility to upgrade the stadium’s Wi-Fi system to meet demand for up to 75,000 patrons with mobile devices.
Club lounges have been renovated with new carpet and ceilings with stronger branding, done in tandem with Savor.
The Alamodome has always had a flexible seating grid. It can seat 20,000-plus in an arena configuration and be cut down to 5,000 for an intimate show in a theater setting.
For the Mikey Garcia-Sergey Lipinets boxing match Feb. 10, a junior welterweight championship bout, the dome will accommodate up to 30,000.
“Boxing is just as good [for producing revenue] as a concert,” Langella said. “I buy a lot of curtains … you take what you can get.”