The latest sports venue to receive a facelift at the University of Oregon is one of the most beloved. Historic Hayward Field is set to receive a complete renovation in preparation for the 2021 Track and Field World Championships. Vin Lananna, the UO associate athletic director and president of TrackTown USA, a local advocacy group for track and field, is one of the main people responsible for the renovation.
Lananna took the time to sit down and talk about what to expect from the new Hayward.
Emerald: Why is Hayward being renovated?
Vin Lananna: It’s time. The east grandstands has had lots of money put into it on a regular basis for maintenance. Once and for all, we need to fix the basic things: unsexy things like bathrooms, fences and rot at the top of the grandstand. We need to renovate that, refurbish it so it will look the same but better.
E: How about some of the other things being done to the facility?
VL: The west grandstands also has difficulty in that they have never been accessible for the disabled — we don’t have elevators or handrails. We don’t have enough restrooms and we don’t have enough seats as we host the World Championships in 2021. So the impetus is we have to make the stadium be, on a temporary basis, around 30,000 seats. We will have a permanent facility that is about 12,000 — which is a couple thousand more than we have now. We will try to maintain all the charm of it and all the historic perspective.
What is being done to the Bowerman Curve and Building?
No real decision has been made yet with the Bowerman building. It’s likely it will either be taken down or moved in some way, because the seating does need to extend down to the start of the 100 [meter race].
Is the hammer still going to be moved to the infield?
Yes. The hammer obviously presents some challenges, because of the configuration of our jumps. A lot of other stadiums serve as soccer venues, so the runways are outside lane eight. We don’t want to do that. Our challenge is to conduct the hammer on the infield, while other events are going on.
Has a budget been set for the project?
Still working on it. The reality of it is we are still in the planning stages.
When does planning become action?
We are pretty close. We expect by the end of this academic year to have a good sense of the financial side of it and have a real timeline. My timeline and their timeline might not be the same. Mine is this summer, after the Olympic Trials. We have a window; we don’t plan to have to cancel or change the PreClassic or the NCAAs. There might be some construction going on, but we want to have them here without any interruptions.
How about the Oregon Preview and Oregon Twilight, those kind of meets?
It’s possible that in 2017 there will be construction going on and they will not be able to be held — but everything else will stay intact in 2016. Right now, I am working with our track coaches to find out what that would actually look like.
You talk about keeping the charm of Hayward, and obviously it has a lot of nostalgia for many people. Are there some specific ways you are trying to do that?
Well I think that the iconic venue is the east grandstands, which we will maintain intact and everyone who arrives on campus will see the east grandstands will be exactly the same. It’s funny, because the west isn’t that old. The plans that we have now are really what Bill Bowerman had when he put them in — he just ran out of money.
Why should fans be excited for this renovation?
I think what we will have is all of the amenities of a major sporting event. So the NCAAs, the Olympic Trials, the PreClassic, the Oregon season, the high school state meet — it will all have all the charm of Wrigley Field and other iconic venues. The athletes are going to perform. The stuff they do as competitors will all be very similar. But all the other stuff will be modernized. It will not be ornate; you will know it’s Hayward Field.
Follow Christopher Keizur on Twitter @chriskeizur