Business View Magazine | November 2019

195 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2019 THE WASHINGTON–GR I ZZLY STADIUM feet wide, approximately twice the size of the old display, which was added in 2002. On Oct. 14, 2017, the Washington-Grizzly Champions Center opened. A new generation of Washington’s, Dennis and Phyllis’s sons Kyle and Kevin, on behalf of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, gifted $7 million to the University of Montana’s Department of Athletics, to help defray the Center’s $14 million price tag. The Center houses a new student-athlete strength and conditioning facility, football locker room, football lounge, and football meeting rooms. The weight room and locker room sit below grade and make up the first level, while the second level includes a mezzanine for the weight room, the ‘95 National Championship team meeting room, five other meeting rooms, and a wider concourse in the football stadium. Tia Fluri, Assistant Athletic Director for Internal Operations and Events, reports that, this summer, the Stadium underwent some preventative maintenance. “We try to bite off projects every summer, when we have the down time to be able 23,183. Washington-Grizzly Stadium underwent its third expansion, at a cost of approximately $6.5 million, prior to the 2008 football season. The eastside expansion houses a 500-seat “Stadium Club” with two membership levels: the “Canyon Room,” which has 125 seats inside, and the “Hellgate Terrace,” which has 375 outside seats. The 2008 expansion also provided 375 Grizzly Scholarship Association priority seats, as well as 1,150 non-priority seats, and increased the Stadium’s seating capacity to 25,217, making it the largest venue of its kind in the State of Montana. A natural-grass playing surface gave way to SprinTurf prior to the 2001 season at a cost of about $1 million, which was paid for by an anonymous donor. A new SprinTurf playing surface was installed in 2008. The playing surface was replaced, again, in the summer of 2016, with multi- color “FieldTurf.” A new “Griz Vision” jumbotron, with ancillary screens to its left and right, was installed in the summer of 2016. It features HD- quality video, and measures 32 feet high by 55