Rose Bowl Stadium maps upgrades

ROSY OUTLOOK: Rose Bowl Stadium plans to install a much bigger videoboard spanning the north end zone, shown here in a rendering, as part of multiple upgrades to the 102-year-old building. (Courtesy venue)

Funding extends to grants, tax rebates

PASADENA, California — The revitalization of Rose Bowl Stadium starts a new chapter, tied to $80 million in renovations to upgrade a century-old building that will play host to 2026 FIFA World Cup matches and 2028 LA Olympics activities.

The improvements, designed by Gensler, include a new field-level club in the south end zone and loge boxes below the suite tower on the west sideline, which effectively reduces capacity by 17,000 seats, in part to right-size the building for primary tenant UCLA football; and installation of a bigger videoboard to span the width of the north end zone, as shown in a rendering released by the Rose Bowl Stadium Operating Co., the nonprofit which runs the venue for the city of Pasadena.

Derek Doolittle, Rose Bowl Stadium’s general manager, said project officials plan to break ground for the field-level club in January 2026 with completion by the fall of that year. At this point, officials are still working through the design with Gensler and there is no general contractor on board for the renovations, Doolittle said.

The timing for seating improvements, including the loge boxes, will take place after the Olympics because event officials want the manifest as it stands now to remain intact, he said. The new videoboard could potentially be in place prior to the Olympics.

The upgrades are tied to fund-raising efforts by the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, which established The Lasting Legacy Campaign to finance the renovations.

Some renovations such as the new safe-standing student sections along the east sideline behind the visitors bench, a new sound system and restoring the iconic exterior marquee  were completed for the 2024 football season, which culminates in the 111th Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 1, 2025, a quarterfinal matchup for the College Football Playoff.

Doolittle took over as the stadium’s general manager in July after serving as assistant GM for one year. He previously spent a combined 13 years with UCLA and Missouri in facility operations and event management.

His time at UCLA led Doolittle down the path to take charge of leading the 102-year-old building into the future.

Over the past several months, Doolittle formed a plan to address deferred maintenance, and big picture, modernize the stadium that sits in one of college football’s most beautiful settings, fronting the San Gabriel Mountains.

Over the past 20 years, apart from the financing aspect, it’s been a tricky and sometimes tedious process to renovate Rose Bowl Stadium while protecting the historic landmark status of the publicly-owned building.

“We know that to stay competitive in this country that we need to continue pumping money into the stadium instead of spinning our wheels as to what’s the next big thing for the Rose Bowl,” he said.

The fact that UCLA has struggled to draw fans for home games over the past few years adds a less-spectacular dynamic to the situation. Multiple sections covering thousands of seats are tarped off in both end zones.

For the Iowa game on Nov. 8, VenuesNow estimated the relocated student seating, spanning Sections 6 through 10, was a little more than half full. Students arrived four minutes before kickoff after taking a bus ride from the Westwood campus through LA traffic on a Friday afternoon.

Overall, Hawkeye fans appeared to outnumber Bruin fans 2-1 at the game, with attendance announced at 53,467.

UCLA’s final two homes, Nov. 23 against archival USC and Nov. 30 vs. Oregon, the country’s No. 1 ranked team, drew respective crowds of 59,473 and 43,051, according to official attendance figures.

UCLA’s lease at Rose Bowl Stadium runs through June 2044.

Apart from sports events, Rose Bowl Stadium aims to remain a viable concert venue and received good news this week when Live Nation announced AC/DC’s 2025 “Power Up” tour of 13 U.S. stadiums includes a  April 24 date in Pasadena.

Local sources say Rose Bowl Stadium also wants to produce smaller concerts with 18,000 capacity to compete with the Hollywood Bowl.

Prior to Iowa-UCLA, Doolittle provided VenuesNow with a short tour of Rose Bowl Stadium, including a pair of old storage spaces converted into hall of fame and stadium memorabilia displays that double as hospitality areas.

As part of his research to come up with a master plan of improvements, Doolittle visited LSU’s Tiger Stadium and Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium, two college football venues similar in age, to get ideas for what could be done to refresh Rose Bowl Stadium. Ten years ago it, underwent a nearly $200 million expansion to build the Terry Donahue Pavilion, the official name of the suite tower.

Those visits dovetailed with Rose Bowl Stadium’s inclusion in the Historic Stadium Caucus, an organization which launched in 2023 to preserve 30 college football stadiums. It was driven in part by the efforts of a bipartisan Congressional group to maintain and protect the stadiums’ legacy status and help come up with funding to resolve issues with aging infrastructure issues.

“We all have plumbing lines and electrical systems that are old and concrete that’s in (deteriorating) condition over time,” Doolittle said. “Our goal is to band together and fight our challenges together and can we get funding to fix them. We have lobbyists in Sacramento and Washington helping us out with this caucus.”

To this point, the caucus has provided about $3.5 million in state and federal grants that’s going to help restore Rose Bowl Stadium’s gas and water lines. It’s all about pounding the pavement to get money out there that’s available to update the less-sexy pieces of stadium development compared with soliciting donors to put their name on a new club or suite level, Doolittle said.

In addition, the Historic Venue Restoration Act, a state of California initiative signed into law in October 2023, provides a portion of sales and taxes generated at Rose Bowl Stadium on event days to be reinvested back into the facility for restoration, infrastructure , safety, security and maintenance purposes.

The Hollywood Bowl and Cal-Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium are two other venues benefitting from the legislation.

It boils down to a percentage of concessions and merchandise sales that those venues receive as part of the venue restoration act, Doolittle said.

“We’re still trying to understand the ramifications in a positive way relative to what the dollars and cents are,” he said. “We conservatively feel that it’s going to be $1 million a year that we can reinvest in our infrastructure.

“We have to be creative,” Doolittle said. “This is a city-owned venue and the reality is Pasadena is a relatively small city of 130,000 and we have an 89,000-seat football stadium to keep up. We try to stay out of the taxpayers’ pockets.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.