Stadium update nears end


TRAVIS SPRADLING/THE ADVOCATE
The finishing touches are being put on the north end zone expansion of A.W. Mumford Stadium at Southern University.

TRAVIS SPRADLING/The Advocate
Workers recently added blue paint to the north end zone facility so that the addition matches the rest of A.W. Mumford Stadium. Related Content


Contractor hopes to have work finished by home opener
By PERRYN KEYS
Advocate sportswriter
Published: Sep 1, 2009 - Page: 1C


The desk in Pete Richardson’s office is fairly common.

It is oversized, like the desk of some CEO or hotshot bank manager. It is hard and wooden, with pullout drawers on either side.

It is covered with pens, stacks of paper and videocassettes — marks of a college football coach in the middle of fall practice.

It is also fairly old.

This desk has served Richardson well, he said. But the time has come for the coach and the desk to part ways.

“I came here 17 years ago with this same furniture, so it’ll be hard to give it up,” Richardson said with a wry smile. “But change is change.”

At some point this month — certainly after Saturday, when Southern plays a long-awaited season opener at Louisiana-Lafayette — Richardson will ditch his old desk and his old office in the ratty, worn-out Jesse Owens Hall. And he will move into a building that’s 100 percent new.

So new, in fact, it’s not quite finished.

Less than 150 yards away, Matthew Jones and Larry McGhee sat on the second floor of the gleaming three-story facility at the north end of A.W. Mumford Stadium last week.

For now, the building’s largest suite, on the third floor, serves as their makeshift office. Across plastic folding tables, they have strewn blueprints and spreadsheets and invoices.

Jones is project manager for Lafayette-based The Lemoine Company, which undertook the project of constructing this 84,000-square-foot, $17.5 million mammoth, which turns the Jaguars’ home into a horseshoe.

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