ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 22, 1995 TAG: 9512220013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
Roanoke paid $100,000 to an Atlanta consulting firm to tell the city what to do with Victory Stadium. For years, the city has wasted time on the old stadium's future. Now, it's wasting money.
Forget whatever additional recreation facilities the city wants or needs. The stadium should be the first priority. And just what should Roanoke do about Victory Stadium?
Something. Anything. More than three years ago, when the newspaper wrote about the stadium's 50th birthday, then-Roanoke City parks and recreation chief Gary Fenton said, ``We'd like to market it. But right now, there's nothing here to market.''
Nothing's changed.
Oh, the stadium has gotten some paint since then. Structurally, it's sound, it just doesn't look it. Aesthetically, it remains what it was at 50 - an embarrassment.
During a football game, there's as much lighting coming from the windows of Roanoke Memorial Hospital as from the aged stadium stanchions. And how does a stadium built during FDR's years have a public address system from the Harding Administration?
Some refrigerators are larger than the ticket booths. During a Roanoke Rush game this summer, the workers in the tiny concession stands might as well have been trying to squeeze into a microwave oven themselves. The locker rooms are big enough for a team - a basketball team. About the best thing you can say about the pressbox is that it has a nice view.
As it stands today, Victory Stadium is good for one thing - storage.
Before the city can decide just what to do with Victory Stadium, it must first decide what it wants in the facility. Auto racing? Fine, then forget soccer or track and field. Man and machine don't mix in this equation. If you have a field large enough to accommodate soccer as well as football, then a regulation track is out.
The Roanoke City high schools need a game stadium, because there are no such facilities on the William Fleming and Patrick Henry campuses. They don't need a 24,540-seat stadium, which is what Victory Stadium holds. It's the largest city-run stadium in Virginia.
While Norfolk and Richmond are talking bigger in negotiations with Canadian Football League franchises, Roanoke doesn't need a stadium larger than 12,000-15,000 seats. And it only needs that many to perhaps accommodate some non-sports events. NFL exhibition games and Division I-A football are too big for Roanoke's stadium now.
The only thing that might fill the stadium now is a flood. The numbers in the consultant's report project a VMI game at Victory Stadium with a crowd of 15,000. That's bogus. The Keydets can't draw half that many for home games in Lexington. VMI's big draw on the schedule, Marshall, is leaving the Southern Conference, too.
Roanoke could tear down half of the stadium, leaving 12,000 seats, and build a new facility with a couple thousand seats on the vacant side, with new locker rooms, concession stands and perhaps even offices for the parks and recreation department. Right now, there's a lot of wasted space at the stadium.
Or, Roanoke could do the right thing. It could level the stadium and build a new, 14,000-seat facility. Build a band shell behind one end zone, too. It could still be called Victory Stadium. The turf still could be McLelland Field. Just because it's new doesn't mean it has to be McCadden Municipal Stadium or the Bowers Bermuda Grass Bowl.
A new stadium also would tie in with the superb River's Edge complex across the Roanoke River, too. Sure, that would be the most costly proposition - an estimated $21 million - but look at what a $10 million baseball palace did for that sport and civic pride in Salem.
The only things worth saving about Victory Stadium are its memories. Race cars there this summer. Then schedule a demolition derby of another sort.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB