Regents vote on Gophers new athletics facility delayed until September

The Gophers hoped to get approval to break ground on their proposed $150 million athletics village at next week's Board of Regents meeting. But the school announced Friday that this won't be brought to a vote until the Regents meeting in September.

Senior associate athletics director Chris Werle said this will not affect the scheduled completion date, but merely the groundbreaking date. September would be the first time after next week's board meeting that the Regents could vote on this, as July has an abbreviated Regents agenda and there is no Regents meeting in August.

Football coach Jerry Kill has repeatedly said he wants shovels in the ground during August, and Athletics Director Norwood Teague said last month that he was confident ground would be broken in August.

"We don't feel disappointed because the overall timeline has not changed," Werle said. "And we still, pending Board of Regents approval, want to have shovels in the ground in the fall.

"I don't want to get out front of the Board of Regents, but once the capital budget recommendation approval is done, then I think we can work on as aggressive a timeline as we feel we need to begin building."

The Gophers have raised $70 million toward the project, and Teague said last month that they were closing in on some other big gifts.

"Fundraising is not why we are doing this," Werle said of pushing the issue to September. "We still feel confident that we have the fundraising solution, and as far as going to the board with that, that was not our concern. Our concern is having schematic designs that these folks can truly respond to and review as well as having a permanent solution for a competition-level track."

The current track would be demolished with that land re-purposed for a new indoor football facility. This delay gives the Gophers time to finalize their future plans for the track.

"As a responsible athletics department," Werle said, "we didn't want to go to the Board of Regents -- as part of the annual capital budget recommendation -- we didn't want to take this to them without what we feel was the best solution for the relocation and building of a competition-level track."

In January, a Title IX complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education over concerns that the Gophers women's track and cross country athletes were being displaced and overlooked. That investigation by the Office of Civil Rights remains open.

"This [delay] is in no way related to the Office of Civil Rights review that is currently taking place," Werle said.