Tailgate Party Planned for CLU North Campus Groundbreaking

California Lutheran University will celebrate the official breaking of ground on the North Campus on Friday, Oct. 22, at 11:30 a.m.

The “tailgate party” event will include entertainment, remarks from dignitaries including a few significant supporters like “Sparky” Anderson, Bob Samuelson and Jack Gilbert for whom venues will be named. Members of the press are invited to attend and to stay for lunch along with members of the University community and invited guests.

The athletics complex, to be located on the university’s North Campus, will include the Sports and Fitness Center, the Samuelson Aquatics Center, the George “Sparky” Anderson Baseball Stadium, a soccer stadium, and track and field facilities. The 96,000–square–foot Sports and Fitness Center will house two major gymnasiums (including the Jack Gilbert Arena), the Lundring Events Center, a fitness center, a dance studio, classrooms and labs, a sports medicine facility, the Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame, and faculty and coaches offices.

Groundbreaking activity actually began on the north campus in July, with grading projects making way for construction to begin within the next few months on several venues, explains Ritch K. Eich, Vice President for Marketing and Communications. “The ?tailgate party’ will allow the University to festively celebrate the long–awaited development and the near completion of the Now is the Time capital campaign which has raised close to $80 million.”

The comprehensive campaign will fund the first phase of the North Campus Athletics Complex as well as academic facilities (including the Spies–Bornemann Center for Education and Technology which opened in 2002), new programs, centers, professorships and scholarship endowments.
MEDIA NOTE: For more information about the festivities on Oct. 22, please call the University Relations Office at (805) 493–3151 or visit www.clunet.edu.