Northridge Quashes Plans for Stadium : Development: Proposed $200-million campus project that would have included a football facility falls by the wayside.

Bob Burt, the Cal State Northridge football coach, said Wednesday he could coach a football team on a cow pasture.

He might get the chance.

The school announced Wednesday that a proposed $200-million campus development plan, which included construction of a football stadium, had been scrapped “due to the state of the economy.” So for the foreseeable future, Burt and his football team will remain at North Campus Stadium, a ramshackle facility built in the 1930s that has in recent years fallen into disrepair.

The proposed North Campus Project, which was to include a hotel, 360,000 square feet of office space, restaurants and theaters on campus, would have given the school a shining new stadium with a seating capacity of 30,000.

North Campus Stadium, built as part of the Devonshire Downs fairgrounds during the Depression, has a seating capacity of 6,000, dirt parking lots, sagging chain-link fences and an archaic, leaky sprinkler system for the field. The press box can fit only about 10 people.

“Because of the hope for a new stadium in the immediate future, the North Campus facility has basically been on hold for the last five years,” Athletic Director Bob Hiegert said. “In essence, the football stadium is a mess. It needs a lot of attention. We were told not to significantly improve it when it might be bulldozed for the new stadium in a year or two. Now, it all needs considerable work. The restrooms, parking services, sprinkler systems, lighting, seating.

“It’s a very, very old facility.”

If that was bad news for CSUN, there is worse news.

“There’s no money to fix any of it up,” Hiegert said.

He said a strong effort to raise funds from the private sector for such a project would begin immediately.

The announcement Wednesday also puts added pressure on the school to find a home for its football team in an NCAA Division I-AA conference. Football is the only one of the school’s 16 men’s and women’s teams not competing at the Division I level, and NCAA rules require CSUN to make that move with the football team by September, 1993. The Matadors likely will compete at the Division I-AA level, a step down from Division I but a step up from its current Division II status.

Last week, the Division I-AA Big Sky Conference (Boise State, Idaho State, Idaho, Weber State, Montana, Montana State, Eastern Washington and Northern Arizona) scrapped plans to invite CSUN and Cal State Sacramento into the conference for the 1992-93 season.

Among the most significant reasons cited by Big Sky officials for the rejection of CSUN was the school’s stadium.

“There was some concern expressed over the compatibility of their facilities with the rest of the Big Sky schools,” Big Sky Commissioner Ron Stephenson said.

Burt said CSUN may be forced to help create a new conference for its team.

“I think there are many other teams in the same boat,” said Burt, who mentioned Cal State Sacramento, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, St. Mary’s and UC Davis. “Those schools must move to Division I-AA quickly, and the only way to do it is by creating our own conference.”

Burt, like Hiegert, was not surprised by the announcement that the development plan had been scrapped. The state’s faltering economy over the past two years, they said, along with proposed layoffs of faculty members this summer, was a strong indication that the $200 million development project might be dying.

“Like everyone, I had been looking forward to a new stadium,” Burt said. “But the way things go in this system . . . if it happens, it happens. I’m worried about things I can control, and I can’t control that.

“I honestly never thought much about it and never worried about it. When I was coaching at Cal State Fullerton, they talked about a new football stadium. The standing joke among the coaches was, ‘Yeah, not in our lifetime.’

“But I will not be negative about this. I just won’t. The field is OK. I could coach a team in a cow pasture if I had to.”

Also dying with Wednesday’s announcement was the possibility of a new indoor facility, primarily for the school’s basketball team. A proposal to build such a facility was linked to the North Campus Project, if funds were available.

The current facility, the Northridge Gym, is a 3,000-seat building that the basketball team has called home for 30 years.

“This has certainly been a big letdown for us,” Hiegert said. “This is not good news for us at all. But we anticipated it. We saw the demise coming. It’s very, very frustrating.”

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