DeviousDawg's vision for Davis Wade Stadium's South EZ expansion/hotel...

[DeviousDawg]

First and foremost, I am by no means a photo shop wizard, but I believe I have done a good enough job to convey my vision.

Original rendering of South EZ hotel


Devious Dawg's rendering of South EZ hotel

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***Added 5/10/20***

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Obviously, I am only focused on the field side of the hotel in this post, but I also have some ideas for The Junction facing side of the hotel, which I will discuss later. Anyway, it looks a lot better than the original, imo. Here are the main differences between the original rendering and my vision:

1. The hotel is fully attached to the East and West sides of DWS. This is the biggest thing to me, it has to bowl in the stadium. It should look more like a stadium than a hotel, and I think this achieves that. I couldn't create a perfect and fluid connection between the East/west sides and the hotel bottom floor, but you can use your imagination, it should be seamless.

2. Instead of just common areas to congregate/watch the game, it should offer Hotel rooms with balconies that overlook the stadium. In my design, there are 32 private balconies overlooking the field. These are the high dollar hotel rooms, and the larger ones, with most of them being suites. The balconies create an atmosphere similar to the Left Field Lofts. I think it would be stupid to not have balconies, no one wants to watch a game behind a single hotel room window. The balconies are essential, and add to the overall atmosphere of the stadium.

3. I added a "Scoreboard Club" atop the Hotel, it is larger than the North EZ scoreboard club, with a capacity of ~2,500 chairback seats. This give the stadium a bit of symmetry, with scoreboard clubs and their Jumbotrons facing one another. I envision ~500 rooms(seems like a lot but it would fill every football weekend, and would be great for recruiting trips), with only 32 facing the field, that means that the large majority of hotel rooms are smaller(typical hotel room), and facing the junction or looking east and west(the structure is a large rectangle, although slightly curved on the field facing side). So since the large majority of stadiums don't have a balcony with field view access, these hotel rooms and their residents will sit in the Scoreboard club chairbacks. Each room has 5-10 permanent tickets/seats. Your seats depends on which room you get(each room has permanent reserved seats in the Scoreboard club). Also, 1/3 to 1/2 of the seats would be sold just as Scoreboard Club tickets, so not everyone in the chairbacks above the hotel is staying in the hotel. Because there are so many rooms, and it is premium/club seating, most of the rooms are sold as a premium seating package(you don't want a bunch of guys staying in the hotel that are using their season tickets elsewhere in the stadium, otherwise the chairbacks above the hotel wouldn't fill). So 50%-75% of the rooms are sold as season tickets, you reserve the room for the season, and their corresponding seats. Think of these rooms as the Left Field Loft rooms, you essentially lease it for the entire season, maybe even do it in 5 year deals like the Left Field Lofts. The remaining rooms are sold on a game to game basis.


The Junction facing rooms should all be single rooms with small balconies(think of a typical beach front hotel/condo) with grills. This would really add to the atmosphere of the Junction, and create an atmosphere unique to Mississippi State, with balconies overlooking the Junction with a Dudy Noble like wall of smoke during tailgating hours, creating a truly unique College Football tailgating experience.

The Bottom Floor should be open to the Junction, with a shite ton of permanent bathrooms, along with gift shops(think Barnes & Noble) and Tailgating shops(selling the essentials), and an open view to the field from the Junction.

The bottom floor facing the field is another Gridiron Club.

So the hotel side rooms + the rooftop Scoreboard club would add another ~3,000 seats to the stadiums capacity, bringing us up to ~64,000, which I think is too much. I think we should be at 60,000 tops. So how do we achieve this? Easy, install chairbacks through the entirety of the stadium, making MSU the only SEC school with an all chairback stadium. This would reduce the stadiums capacity by about 5,000-7,500. So you add 3,000 and subtract another 6,000 or so, so this would bring the total capacity down to ~58,000, which I think is perfect. This would make our stadium a destination, and the most unique stadium in College Football. We bowl it in, while bringing the capacity down to where it should be and also adding a one of a kind Stadium Hotel.

This is by no means the perfect design, but I think it is on the right track. Our Athletic Department had the right idea with the hotel, and shouldn't shy away from the idea. Everyone liked the idea, just hated the rendering. I think this is more like what the fan base was hoping for.