Athletics Director Sean Frazier is rolling out his plans for renovating NIU’s athletics facilities.

After a year that saw Jordan Lynch finish third in the Heisman and men’s and women’s basketball make impressive turnarounds, Athletics is on track for its continued rise to prominence. With the increased prominence comes national attention and a larger fanbase that Frazier said necessitates improvements be made across all sports, facilities-wise, whether through large-scale projects or maintaining facilities.

To do this, Frazier has put into place the beginning stages of his master facilities plan, which aims to improve the fields, locker rooms and fan experience of every sport.

“A facilities master plan is a comprehensive overview of all Athletics facilities, so from football to tennis to gymnastics to wrestling, so for all of our 17 sports and our 16 offerings, so we’re going to look at everything, not just the football,” Frazier said.

Huskie Stadium

Huskie Stadium, which saw a new scoreboard and audio improvements prior to last season, is getting a facelift off the field.

Frazier said he intends for the stadium to have amenities that should greatly improve the fan experience while also improving the experience for student-athletes competing for gymnastics and wrestling.

“Obviously the football stadium is going to be a major component to that because we’ve done a great job on the football side dealing with the student-athelete amenities,” Frazier said. “… Now, we’ve got to look at amenities at Huskie Stadium dealing with concessions, restrooms, premium areas … as well [as] dealing with … other tenants of Huskies Stadium: gymnastics and wrestling.”

Athletics is already beginning the process of improving the football stadium, having contracted architecture firm AECOM, which has worked on facilities plans at several schools.

After two seasons during which football was prevalent on a national level, Frazier is concerned that without improvements to the football field, it could be a missed opportunity to maintain the attention NIU has received. While doing this, he wants to maintain the atmosphere football fans have created.

“I love the bones of the building,” Frazier said. “There’s still a college feel. I love that. I want to keep that. We have to upgrade the amenities. We have to upgrade in a major way to be competitive, just like other in our conference and other in the country.”

Frazier said fans and donors are committed enough to ensure renovations will go through. He said the renovations will help with recruitment and expanding the fan base, ensuring football remains a national brand.

Convocation Center

While Huskie Stadium will see the bulk of the improvements initially, Frazier is working to improve the atmosphere at the Convocation Center. He said the Convocation Center is the best basketball arena in the MAC but is just lacking the collegiate feel he sees in other sports.

“I would say we need to increase our overall support for basketball,” Frazier said. “I think we made an unbelievable stride this year. We’ve done things this particular year that we haven’t done in decades.”

Part of the facilities plan will be to increase attendance at basketball games. Men’s basketball averaged 1,012 fans per game during the 2013-2014 season. It was the second lowest average attendance in the MAC. Frazier aims to turn this around by potentially adding a shuttle service and upgrading the atmosphere for students.

“We’re going to do a lot more aggressive marketing to make sure the feel is collegiate and I think that the tide has turned for both coaches and both programs,” Frazier said. “I think that next year, folks are going to come and check it out. It won’t be because we’re not winning, it’s going to be because folks need to have an active part of the culture of school spirit in the basketball program. We’re going to help that process along like adding some more amenities and we talked about different things like shuttling folks back and forth to the dorms out here and different creative ways — we’re doing dodge ball during the games. We’re going to ratchet it up a little bit more, make it more collegial.”