CSU selling memberships for stadium's New Belgium Porch

Fans hoping to enjoy a beer on game days on the New Belgium Porch of the new CSU football stadium will have to pay extra for the privilege.

School officials announced prices and capacity limits for the field-level Orthopaedic & Spine Center of the Rockies Field Club and New Belgium Porch on Thursday. Current season ticket-holders who commit to priority or premium season tickets in the on-campus stadium, set to open in 2017, will have the first priority to reserve spots in the two VIP areas.

Steve Cottingham, CSU’s executive senior associate athletic director, said 1,200 memberships at $200 apiece will be sold for access to the porch on game days. That’s on top of the $225 charge for season tickets and Ram Club memberships of $100, $300 or $500 per seat, depending on location.

There are no plans to sell tickets for individual games to either area but that could become an option if the capacities are not reached through the sale of season memberships, Cottingham said.

“The initial offer is to season ticket-holders who have a seat somewhere else in the stadium, so they’ll have the option to access any of those spaces to hang out there for a while,” Cottingham said. “Some people may choose to sit there and watch the whole game.”

The New Belgium Porch includes two premium bars with television screens and a field-level drink rail.

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New Belgium donated $4.3 million for construction and naming rights to the porch. The Fort Collins brewery’s products, including its signature Fat Tire beer, will be available throughout the stadium on game days, Cottingham said.

Seventy-five to 80 percent of fans entering the new stadium are expected to enter through the north end zone, officials with Populous, the architecture firm that designed the stadium, said. They’ll enter a concourse area just north of the New Belgium Porch that will provide access to seats on the east and west sides of the stadium.

The stadium will have seats for 36,000 fans and total capacity of about 41,000.

The OCR Field Club is located on the 50-yard line on the west side of the field. Fans there will be able to see the home team enter and exit the field through an adjacent tunnel, and watch the game from behind the team bench. Amenities in the club include a premium bar with food and beverages for purchase, several flat-screen TVs and a 4,300-square-foot hospitality space.

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Memberships to the OCR club will sell for $400 apiece and be capped at 600, Cottingham said. A spokesman for OCR declined to reveal financial details of its sponsorship and naming-rights deal for the field club. OCR has provided CSU’s athletic teams with doctors and other medical assistance since 1969.

CSU is taking reservations for both areas, with deposits of $100 per person required to hold a spot. Memberships to the VIP area will be limited to the number of premium seats purchased. Reservations can be made online at stadium.colostate.edu/vip, by calling 970-491-2567 or by emailing Jami.Baker@colostate.edu.

CSU announced two weeks ago that it had sold out all of its suite, box and club seats at the new stadium. Revenue generated from those sales and the two additional VIP locations will top $3.3 million annually, which is $700,000 a year above the most-optimistic projections included in a 2012 study on the feasibility of building the stadium.

All of the new stadium’s premium areas will be available to companies, organizations and community groups that wish to rent them for events throughout the year, school officials said.

CSU will start taking orders for season tickets at the new stadium soon, with priority for seat selection based on Ram Point totals as of Dec. 31, 2016. Details about the Ram Point program and reseating process are available online at http://seats3d.com/ncaa/colorado_state_university/football/.

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news

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