"Their support is a significant step toward bringing Gopher football back to campus," says Robert Bruininks, president of the University of Minnesota. Bills have has been introduced at the Minnesota Legislature to support the proposed stadium. The legislation calls for the university to fund 60% and the state to fund 40$ of the cost.
The 50,000-seat stadium would open in the fall of 2008 on the Minneapolis campus, across Oak Street Southeast from Williams and Mariucci arenas, the homes of basketball and men's hockey. Like those facilities and the former Memorial Stadium on campus, it would be built largely of red brick.
The 32-acre site, owned mainly by the university and currently used for surface parking, is not far from where Memorial Stadium sat for 68 years before it was demolished after the Gophers began playing in the Metrodome in 1982.
The university's lease at the Metrodome expires in 2011 and it will take several years to build a replacement. In addition, the Metrodome needs a costly rehabilitation, and both the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings are looking for new homes, making the aging facility too costly for the university to support as a sole tenant.
In the naming rights agreement, TCF will pay the university $35 million over 25 years, during which time the stadium will be named "TCF Bank Stadium" and include prominent naming signage inside and outside of the stadium. TCF will also receive advertising opportunities, a suite, tickets, parking and use of the stadium twice annually.
The university and TCF have also agreed to extend TCF's sponsorship of the U Card, scheduled to end in 2013, with estimated payments to the university of more than $1.6 million annually for student scholarships and programs and other non-stadium purposes. TCF will be able to offer a debit affinity card to university alumni and athletics supporters, for which the university will receive annual royalties. TCF will have options to extend its ATM lease on campus and lease a new banking office on the West Bank.
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