New Pitt Stadium Grassroots Effort Growing

PITTSBURGH, PA - Across the state in Philadelphia, Temple University is advancing plans for a new football stadium to be built on a very tight on-campus footprint. Anthony DeFiore hopes the University of Pittsburgh soon embarks on the same ambitious path.

“It has to happen,” he said. “Heinz Field has been great for the Steelers, and the Steelers have been wonderful to Pitt while they’ve been playing there. But Pitt needs its own place to play on campus.”

DeFiore, an Allentown retiree, is a former Philadelphia city government official who holds a master’s degree in urban planning and public administration from New York University. He’s spearheading a growing grassroots effort to return Pitt football to Oakland, where it hasn’t played since Pitt Stadium closed in 1999.

DeFiore has created a new Pitt stadium website detailing his proposal and a Facebook page he created less than six months ago to promote the idea has nearly a thousand followers.

The stadium, which would seat 40,000 to 50,000 people, would be located on Pitt’s upper campus near the Cost Center and Petersen Events Center. It would be built primarily on what is now a parking lot for the Pete on property the university already owns.

DeFiore hasn’t crunched hard numbers for the project but estimates a stadium could be built for no more than $150 million, a figure that initially seems low. The 12,000-seat Petersen Center, which opened 2002, cost $119 million.

But in Philadelphia, estimates for the proposed 35,000-seat Temple stadium are in the $130 million range. The project would be funded primarily from private donations and bonds that would be paid with the money the university spends in rent on Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Philadelphia Eagles, to play its home games.

Temple officials believe naming rights and other opportunities being pursued can defray a significant amount of the facility’s costs. DeFiore sees no reason why a similar approach wouldn’t work for Pitt.

“It can be done,” he said. “And if it’s done, what can be built on that site can be the loudest, most formidable college football stadium to play in in the country.”

After playing the 2000 season at Three Rivers Stadium, Pitt has called Heinz Field home since 2001 but has had difficulty attracting crowds to the 67,000-seat facility. At a speaking engagement in November, athletic director Heather Lyke called Heinz Field “a fabulous venue” and said that building an on-campus stadium would be “very difficult.”

But Lyke acknowledged Pitt’s attendance woes at Heinz Field and suggested tarping off some areas of the stadium.

DeFiore said he has emailed his proposal to Lyke and Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher but has not received a response. When asked by Patch Wednesday to comment on the idea, Pitt executive associate athletic director E.J. Borghetti said, "There are no existing university plans for an on-campus football stadium. The website has no association, formal or otherwise, with the university."

Renderings via Anthony DeFiore. Used with permission.