Sept. 6, 2014 The following is a roundtable discussion with Executive Associate Athletic Director Nick Joos and Associate AD Doug McNamee answering some of the concerns and feedback received after last week's McLane Stadium debut:
JOOS: Probably the biggest first thing is the gates. We, obviously, had good success last week with opening the gates two hours before the game. So, for the rest of this season, we'll continue (opening the gates) two hours before, because it did take all two hours to get everyone in the building. And we don't want anyone to miss kickoff; that's our goal. Certainly if you look at the aerial photos from right around kickoff, everybody was in the building; there were no waiting in lines to get in.
Q: Doug, there was some discussion about opening the premium areas a little earlier as well. What are you doing in the Club, Loge and Suites areas?
McNAMEE: The premium areas are going to have a "soft" opening two hours and 15 minutes prior to kickoff, just to give those people in the Club, the Loges and the Suites and an opportunity to get in there a little ahead of time. Last week, it was reversed. The rest of the stadium was opening at two hours, and (the premium areas) were opening late, which caused a lot of headaches and anxious people. So, we're going to reverse that and open up the premium areas a little bit early.
Q: Probably the one thing that created the most feedback and something that needs to be addressed is the Baylor Basin Bridge that got clogged up prior to the game and particularly for the Bear Walk. What's being done about that situation.
JOOS: We've had numerous meetings and de-briefs over the course of the week, relative to the feedback we've gotten in many areas. And, obviously, the bridge is an area that we're focusing on relative to traffic patterns, security and safety. And we hope that it will be an improved experience in that regard. They talked about using a partition down the middle. I don't know if they finalized it, but they've got some ideas on how they're going to try to attack it. The difficult thing is we had encouraged, and we continue to encourage, people to come early. But this past week, there might have been 8,000 to 10,000 people out there for Robert's statue dedication. So, it could just be an anomaly. We had the Griffin statue unveiling, the Bear Walk and there were also a lot of people there early looking at their bricks and trying to find their bricks. All those factors contributed to certainly a very festive environment, but one that caught our attention and we're addressing in terms of how we can fix it internally.
Q: I know some people have voiced concerns about that bridge swaying and were worried about it possibly collapsing. Is that a legitimate concern?
McNAMEE: It was a potential collapse issue at all; it was designed to handle that.
JOOS: But I think we also have to be cognizant of safety and making sure we don't have an incident.
McNAMEE: That area was full of tailgaters, full of Bear Foundation folks, and it was an awesome atmosphere. We don't want the bridge to be a deterrent to people to participate in that atmosphere. So, they are working with ways to make that a better situation.
JOOS: We'll study the traffic patterns over the next few games. But again, was it just because everybody was there early because of Rob? Did that really bottleneck everything? I think one of the best games to judge the flow of traffic will be TCU (Oct. 11).
Q: One of the questions or concerns that came up were the longer-than-expected concession stand lines. What's being done to alleviate that?
JOOS: We've spent a lot of times in meetings this week with the Savor people, with the SMG people, with the Club Corp people. And for all those individuals, it was their first time in the building. I think they've all identified areas where they can improve and better, and they realize they have to. And I think they've all committed to having a better experience this week than they had last week. So hopefully, that will translate into a better fan experience for our fans and our donors. We do have a little bit of a challenge this year in that we are serving bottles, and then next year we'll switch to fountains.
McNAMEE: That causes some problems from a storage-space standpoint with coolers. It's harder to move those around. It's a lot harder to move bottles than it is fountain drinks.
JOOS: The other thing they're going to do this week - and I think it's a very good idea - is they've indicated that they're going to scale back their menu a little bit. They really tried to jump out there and really show that this is different than the past. So, I think they're going to rein it in a little bit and make it better and maybe do 10 things well as opposed to 20 things average, or whatever. I think that will help them as well.
McNAMEE: Particularly in some of the Bear Foundation seating areas like 302 through 309, where it's a little bit more of a challenge to get concessions, we've asked them to target those areas. So, I think you'll see a lot more hawkers out there selling drinks and other items.
Q: Doug, there were some issues in the premium areas in terms of getting into the suite area and the speed of service, specifically in the Club. Can you address that?
McNAMEE: From the Bear Foundation side, probably our biggest point of emphasis was the entrance to the Club, Loge and Suites. We have added additional signage and additional staffing at those entrances. We've tried to clearly lineate where Club people are supposed to go up. We're going to encourage them to go up the escalator. And then we're going to encourage the Suite and Loge people to go up the elevators. There will be specific elevators designed for each of those. We're also going to move away from wristbands and go to hand stamps. It just takes a lot longer to put on a wristband than it does to just stamp your hand. They will also mark the ticket as well, so you'll have to have the ticket and the stamp to move around. And then as far as the food service, specifically in the Club and some of the Loges, Club Corp recognizes that there were some challenges. They have to shrink the lines. The lines were a little longer than what was necessary. That was due to a couple reasons: 1), just the first time figuring things out; understanding the service elevator and how things move up and down the floor. That took a little bit longer than expected; and 2), we had a large mass of people that got into the Club that we're supposed to be in there. So, that caused quite a commotion to get the right people in. That, hopefully, has been eliminated. It was kind of a snowball effect that caused it. But we believe they've got the necessary fixes in place.
Q: Coming into the week, probably the No. 1 concern from most people was the parking. Didn't that go just about as smoothly as it possibly could have?
JOOS: We thought it went very, very smooth. Now again, I think some of that could be that we really encouraged people to come early, come early, and obviously they heeded our advice. There were many compliments about downtown. A lot of people used the downtown option that didn't have on-site parking; and that seemed to work really well. We really appreciate all the folks downtown and Megan Henderson and her crew for pitching in, with Waco Transit, and making that a success. And then a lot of people walked to the stadium from downtown as well. All in all, I think the parking went really well. Again, we'll see how it goes this week. It could be a late-arriving crowd, so you wonder how it will go this week. But every time I looked out on I-35, there were no traffic backups.
McNAMEE: For the most part, it was about as reasonable as you could expect with 45,000 people leaving the stadium after the game. The early arrival helped. But still, I think they were prepared to handle the crowd, even if they would have been a little later arriving. We had a few comments that the walk from the Ferrell Center lots was a little longer than expected. But most of the comments were `enjoyed the walk; the shuttle was efficient.' The BRIC had good reviews for the ADA-accessible lot. The people who parked at the BRIC said it was a very convenient pickup and drop off at the stadium. And then the big thing was no one was turned around from parking at the A lot, B lot, C lot, no lots, for that matter. No one was turned away, which was a challenge we had last year. We had Gold lot parking people that had a spot, but they were declined access because it was over-full.
JOOS: That's one thing we've really tried to do a good job of this year in all of the lots that we control from a Bear Foundation standpoint, or that we've sold, is really not to oversell them. We've probably undersold them a little bit this year, because it's important that all of our customers get what they're promised.
Q: What about getting in and out of the stadium and moving around? What issues, if anything, did you have there?
McNAMEE: People, a lot of times, were in there for the first time. So, it's a matter of understanding what entrance to come in, versus probably the quicker way. That's something people have to get adjusted to. The D gate was overwhelmingly the largest entry point. B, which is the side directly facing northbound on the interstate, hardly had any action.
JOOS: We kind of knew D would get the most action. C had a little bit more; A was very light. So, I would encourage people to go to the A gate.
McNAMEE: Especially those people who have seats in 101, 100, 201, 200, 301 and 300; they almost have to go in A. Otherwise, they're going to find themselves going up and down to get to their sections. The A entrance was under-utilized. And if you're in that southwest corner of the stadium, you definitely want to go in A, because if you go in A, you have to go all the way around the interior of the stadium to get to your seats. You can't cut across the berm, so you'd have to go all the way around.
Q: Speaking of the berm, what did you find out in terms of how many people you can get in that area?
JOOS: We could probably put a few more in there, just looking at it. But if you get out there, there are some that are sitting, some that are sitting. So, I think we probably need more feedback. This will be another good test for us this week, to see what we can do.
