BSB: WSU Board of Regents set to approve baseball clubhouse Friday
The long-awaited state-of-the-art clubhouse for the Washington State baseball program should take a huge step towards becoming reality Friday afternoon.
The WSU Board of Regents is scheduled to vote on - and barring any last minute complications or legal maneuvering - approve the $10 million project when they meet in Seattle.
If approved, the design phase for the clubhouse is expected to take approximately eight to nine months. Construction should begin in August and take about one year. If built in a timely manner, the clubhouse is scheduled to debut in August 2020.
Planned for the third base side of Bailey-Brayton Field, the new Cougars clubhouse facility will include a locker room, pitching lab, academic services, team meeting rooms, equipment and training areas, as well as "improved ingress and egress" into the ballpark.
"For the people that have invested time, energy and money, it's finally coming to a point where we can move," WSU baseball coach Marty Lees said Tuesday on the weekly 'Cougs in 60' program. "I can't thank them enough. We see a great vision in this program. The new clubhouse will help our player performance by 100 percent because we'll have everything on site like most programs in the country. It will only help us."
The WSU baseball team currently uses locker rooms and training areas at Bohler Gym - more than a quarter-mile away from Bailey-Brayton Field.
"The project will accommodate the needs of the baseball program and enhance the game day experience for players, coaches and fans," the Board's Action Item for the project states. "This facility is considered critical to allow WSU to continue to compete at the highest level with peer programs in the PAC 12 Conference."
The total $10 million price tag for the clubhouse will be paid in part by private donations on hand ($4 million), pledges to be received in the future ($2.5 million) and debt financing in the form of revenue bonds ($3.5 million).
"I'm really excited for our recruits coming in," Lees said. "It's not finalized yet, but we feel very good about it. It's been spearheaded by a group of people we can't thank enough. Now we need to take this program to another level.'
The university projects the bonds will be paid off in full over the next five years as additional donations come in.
Washington State AD Pat Chun told the Moscow-Pullman News in November when the project was first presented to a Board of Regents committee that the athletic department has $10.2 million in donations and pledges to cover the cost of the new facility.
"Our program is the only school in the Pac-12 with an outdated baseball facility," Chun said. "So with the history and tradition we have with our baseball program, we must get our program to where it once was. Every dollar is accounted for in terms of what's been mapped out and in terms of the bridged dollars we will need."
