Death Valley construction update, changes to visitor's tickets, and a brand new tunnel

There will be a different look outside and inside Death Valley.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Fri May 12 07:00:16 GMT-04:00 2023

Graduation is almost in the books, and most of the students have headed home for the summer. When they come back, several construction projects will either be completed or close to completion.

TigerNet spoke with Clemson Athletic Director Graham Neff recently about the projects, especially the Lot 5 project, and he detailed the timeline for competition.

Closed since Nov. 28, 2022, the entire Lot 5 parking facility is now filled with construction equipment and materials to complete Phase II of Clemson Athletics’ Memorial Stadium project. The project hopes to create an enhanced tailgate experience, an improved visual scenery and a new sidewalk for the football team’s Tiger Walk.

“This'll be done. Lines might be drying right before school comes back, which is mid-August,” Neff said. “No concerns on the first home game, FAU. It'll be done early August, quite frankly. So it'll be good. Huge deal, game day experience. And where we have it set up, the team buses pull off Perimeter Road, so it should help some of the traffic logistics on game day on Perimeter Road, which is a huge corridor. So it’s tracking well.”

For those concerned about the loss of trees, the university is ensuring that a tree is planted for each tree lost.

“It's more than a one for one replacement. Now, obviously they're going to take some time to mature, like the ones that were there, were,” Neff said. “And they'll be in right over time, the ones in Lot 5, probably some died along the way so it wasn't organized, so to speak. So it'll be organized, trees, landscaped. But the thing I'm most excited about with it that I think we won't really appreciate, I won't even appreciate it until we experience it, is on the south side of Lot 5, so opposite Littlejohn.

“We've kind of pulled back that embankment and we've added uniquely a three-tiered walkway or sidewalk, basically for standing. So there'll be basically berm standing on that south side of Tiger Walk such that you can be able to look down on Tiger Walk. Obviously you'll be able to line up and do the high-fives and the whole thing, but I think it'll be better optics and better viewpoints, too, along the way. I think it'll be a really cool, cool scene.”

Inside Death Valley, fans will see a new tunnel at the home opener. A tunnel has been added behind the goalposts in the West End Zone that connects to the new home locker room. The players will egress and ingress there during pre-game warm-ups and post-game.

“When they do go in and out of the locker room, whether that's pre-game warmups, halftime, end of the game, et cetera, we'll use that middle tunnel so that the previous home team tunnel will still be there,” Neff said. “And there'll be recruits, primarily, and band, and operations, and officials, and things like that. But the players' tunnel will be in the middle and it has direct access to the renovated locker room underneath there.

“And so with that... So we'll technically have three tunnels, right? Visiting team tunnel is still going to be there. New center home player tunnel, and then the home operations tunnel on the other side. We are filling in, you could see construction photos right now, filling in those two other tunnels, not fully, but with new seats, about a hundred seats each. So the tunnel's still going to be there, but they're not going to be the wide open pie pieces like they have been. Because we are losing some seats, about 125 for the new tunnel, we're going to be able to fill in those two other tunnels and basically add more seats to the lower west just so we don't have three big old tunnels. We're going to kind of tighten them up.”

Another big change comes with visiting ticket allocation. Clemson is one of the few schools left that has given opposing schools prime tickets near the visitor’s tunnel. Teams have had the option of spreading out their 2000 tickets among players and coaches families, VIPs and their bands.

But Clemson fans (and the band) are not treated the same way on the road (think about the band in the far corner of the upper deck at Virginia Tech), and changes have been made to Clemson’s policy.

“We've adjusted the visiting team ticket allocation in and around the visiting team tunnel,” Neff said. “Whereas before, we have basically provided 2000 tickets to each visiting team there. And at their discretion, those that bring a band put their band right there, and a lot of player guests and donors. We've been to plenty of places in our league and outside of our league where the location of visiting team tickets has not been as good, where our band is in the upper deck and where our donors and player parents aren't close.

“So we have reduced the amount of visiting team tickets significantly there. So not only have we added more seats in the west, we are reducing the amount of visiting team allotment that we provide down there. There'll still be some, we're going from 2000 to 500. So there's some that'll be down there, but now that inherently just adds more physical seats because of the tunnel construction, but then also more allocated seats to IPTAY and Clemson fans with the other 1500 tickets going in the upper deck.”

*There is still no word on possible changes to The Hill.