At long last, South Carolina's Board of Trustees released an update on the WIlliams-Brice Stadium re-development project. The board met on Friday afternoon, and approved phase I of the new project.

The project is built around improvements to the West stands of the stadium, although the hope is it will eventually expand to the rest of the stadium. Most of the project is built around adding suites to the stadium. South Carolina currently has the fewest number of luxury suites (18) of any SEC stadium, and that number would double on the west stand alone with phase I of the project. Athletics Director Ray Tanner said the hope is to get to around 90 suites at the project's conclusion, with the west stand count doubling to 36.

"Today we recieved phase I approval to get some design work done with an architect and a contractor," Tanner said. "We're going to try to do our very best to move forward from the west to the east and maybe even more later on. It's an opportunity to generate revenue and create premium space that's been missing at Williams-Brice."

As for a timetable, Tanner is hoping the project can begin construction following the 2025 football season, although admits that finishing it prior to the kick-off of the 2026 season is an ambitious timeline. On the university's official website dedicated to the project, "Phase 1 construction completed" is listed as August 2027 on the timeline.

"In a perfect world if we can hit all of our marks and dates and dollars, then after the '25 season we would start construction and do as much as we possibly can before the '26 kick," Tanner said. "Would it be 100 percent complete on what we're doing? Probably not, but we'd certainly like to have a situation where we have advanced premium space before the '26 kick."

Tanner said fans would still be able to sit in the upper deck during the 2026 season even while construction is going on in the lower level. He said "possibly" some of the upper seats in the lower bowl could be impacted, because they will move the seats from bleachers to chairbacks. The project would reduce the capacity of the stadium, but Tanner said it still would no get below 70,000 people.

"There will be some seating displacement potentially," Tanner said. "We hope there is a lot of opt-in from the people in those seats and we can keep the price points at a place that they will be happy with that. But certainly, re-location is a possibility for some people."

The student section also came up as part of a potential piece of the stadium project further down the line, although it was not included in any renderings or comments regarding phase one.

"We've had many ideas on what we'd like to do. I want to create an opportunity for our students that doesn't happen anywhere else. We talk about the Cockaboose Club; I'd like to see our students have a special space as well that's heated and air conditioned. You can't do everybody because you can't have a space that big. But to have that opportunity, especially for maybe the upperclassmen, we're talking about doing some of those things as we move forward as part of this overall project.

"I hope we can get to that point."

South Carolina first announced plans to update Williams-Brice Stadium when it first acquired land around the stadium in February 2023, and since then there has been a slow trickle of infirmation surrounding the project. The university then sent out a request for information to prospective development companies regarding what it possibly could do with the land.

It then turned those requests for information into a request for proposals back in June.

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