CSU Making Changes for 2018 Football Season at Canvas Stadium

With one season under their belt with the new on-campus stadium, Colorado State University is making a few changes. Many people across campus have spent the winter months working on game weekend operations on campus. CSU reviewed everything about last year’s season and are making some adjustments in response to what worked well and what needs improvement.

The following changes came from the CSU Football Game Day Website:

CSU Game Day Changes for 2018

We hope that football game day can provide positive engagement opportunities. We’ve improved the process for how groups holding events or activities on campus on a game weekend can reserve space and work with Facilities Management, CSUPD and other support staff.

Our RamWalk and its bright orange stripe was a great hit and proved to be gathering spot. RamWalk is along Meridian through lot 236 just west of Newsom Hall. We’re moving parking out of lot 236 to lot 475 so that we don’t have vehicle traffic and parked cars mixed with the crowd drawn by the new game-day tradition of RamWalk.

We learned that our plan for accommodating fans with ADA needs could be more robust. We’re reassigning more than 100 spaces in lot 575 (just south of the South College Ave Parking Garage) that were dedicated to student repark to fans with ADA needs. We already have a shuttle route going between the lot and the stadium. This adds more spaces in an accessible area, and we’re also working to expand game day ADA shuttle access to the West side of the stadium.

Student repark went well. Virtually all students were on point and moved their cars on time, and we identified some areas that we can improve to make the process easier for them. We’re removing the repark spaces from South Campus and adding spaces from the Lake Street Garage (lot 570). This helps students by providing additional repark options that are closer to main campus. Athletics and university partners are looking at adjusting student repark times as necessary for the home game schedule, including assessing needs for our home game scheduled for Friday, Oct. 26.

In response to campus needs, we’re allocating a number of campus use spaces during each game day that can be used for non-game day activities. Some examples of this include providing parking for participants in high school ACT testing that’s held on campus during a Saturday each fall. We will focus on providing those spaces from the Engineering and LSC lot and the UCA lots. It is not complete yet, but similar to the process of securing parking for faculty and staff who need to be on campus on game day, there will a process for units to request these parking spaces if needed. This process will be shared once all details are finalized.

We will continue to reserve parking spaces for faculty and staff needs on game days. This includes faculty and staff who need to be on campus to check in on research projects or other work-related duties. Similar to last season, faculty and staff who do need access to parking on a game day can access parking passes through a request process. We are reviewing the process used last year, when employees asked Department Heads for passes, to look at any changes that may be helpful this fall. Faculty and staff who are attending the game for pleasure must still make parking arrangements similar to other game ticket holders.

We’re also adding more parking options for single game ticket holders, as well as some mini-plan parking packages for those who come to only a few home games. We’ll provide options online before a game, and also create a system to allow fans to pay cash for game-day parking in the Lake Street Garage.

Parking and Transportation Services added an additional section to the Moby parking lot. These spaces are physically separate from the main parking at Moby. We are investigating a plan for allowing single game ticket purchasers to park there on a cash basis, and allow tailgating. This expands parking and tailgating options for guests to our campus.

Finally, by now you know that we will be hosting the annual Border War football game vs. Wyoming at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26. Most of the game day policies and procedures will remain the same as a Saturday game, but certainly there are needed adjustments that will be made to ensure access to campus for faculty, staff and students when hosting a Friday evening, week-day game on campus.