Today's Beacon Journal...


Timing right to build new UA stadium

By David Giffels


The first conversation I had about the possibility of a new University of Akron football stadium took place a year ago in the school's student center. In the Starbucks, to be specific. Next to the grand piano.

If you are a UA alumnus circa, oh, about forever to about two years ago, the very presence of a grand piano and a Starbucks says anything is possible.

Quicker than you can say, ``Meet me in the Chuckery,'' Hilltop High has changed -- almost completely and forever. It is a campus now, in ways it never was before.

Just ask anyone descending the rock-climbing wall in the fitness and recreation center. They'll tell you.

So the growing discussion of a downtown, on-campus football stadium is more than wishful thinking. It will complete UA's transformation. And that's just as important for the community as it is for the university.

Not long after I looked out the Starbucks window and imagined a football stadium there, I returned to campus for a lecture by Richard Florida.

Florida, the ``creative class'' guru, is a thought leader on the vitality of American cities. His talk was at E.J. Thomas Hall, which prompted him to remark how fortunate Akron is to have its college in the city's center.

Cities with their own universities have their own built-in brain trust, which is an important catalyst for lots of things. But in many cases, the university is ill-placed -- away from downtown, or in a community of its own -- and city leaders fret about how to link the energy of the campus with the city as a whole.

Sometimes it's impossible.

Akron's case is somewhat different. For most of the 20th century, the campus meshed awkwardly with the growing, changing city, so that art majors went to class in a former Cadillac dealership and students dodged downtown traffic right in the heart of campus.

Over the last two decades -- first gradually, then suddenly -- our quirky ``Action U'' has become a more coherent institution within a resurgent downtown.

When a set of private developers said earlier this year it will build owner-occupied townhouses near campus, the logic of how the creative energy of the university could flow into the city (and vice versa) became clearer. The Spicer Village housing project is expected to attract professors and graduate students, to give a greater sense of permanence to academics in transition, and to make ``university life'' a more civic concept.

What does any of this have to do with a football stadium?

Well, for all the university's improvements, the Rubber Bowl is an embarrassment. The only upside to its inconvenient location seven miles from campus is that it's not a downtown eyesore.

(Seeing the Rubber Bowl on ESPN2 last year during the nationally televised game against Marshall was like realizing only after the dinner guests had arrived how grungy your dining room rug has become.)

The need for a proper stadium is evident. But adding a new stadium to campus would do far more than shore up a weakness in the university infrastructure. It would inject a new kind of vitality to the city and the campus, more than any other recent improvement.

Like it or not, that's what big college sports do.

Last year, Zips quarterback Charlie Frye started the season as a potential Heisman Trophy candidate. He played himself into the waiting arms of the Cleveland Browns, who drafted him in the third round. (If you believe the sports talk shows, he could be starting Sunday.)

Frye's final season in Akron should have resonated in local lore the way LeBron James' story did. Instead, hardly anybody went to see him play. Imagine how different that season would have been for all of us if it were played in a stadium downtown.

The university bought the Rubber Bowl from Akron in 1970 for $1. It has gotten its money's worth. A new stadium would pay even greater dividends.

David Giffels' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.