KU isn't doing anything anytime soon. that university and that athletic department are in debt up to their eyeballs, enrollments has plummeted and the general atmosphere of KU is a negative one.
Olympic Village = never gonna happen
Memorial Renovation/ new stadium = not happening anytime in the next 20 years.
KSU will be worried about rennovating this rennovation before KU gets around to anything.
Maybe I'm wrong, but with the financing for the WSC, don't we now have about as much debt on our books as they do?
The official line is that we've raised $53 million of the $75 million price tag for the WSC, but that's a little bit deceiving. Donations for the past fiscal year (ended 6/30) weren't anywhere close to $53 million and those donations includes ALL donations (seat licenses for football/basketball, parking spots, etc, plus WSC). Much of the funding raised for the WSC comes from the multi-year commitments made for the suites and club seats. I have no idea how much they cost, but assume a round number of $100,000 to rent a suite for 5 years. John Q Fan made a commitment to donate $20,000 per year for the next five years for that suite. We're counting that full $100,00 in our fundraising, but most of those funds won't be received until after the construction is complete. In order to pay for the construction, we have to take on massive amounts of debt.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly worried about our financial condition and ability to pay that debt thanks to our ticket sales, annual donation level, income from conference TV contract, etc. But the KU ath dept has fundraising capabilities that are as good as or better than our own and they'll get as much money from the conference as we will. If we can raise the funds to pay down our debt, then so can they.
As info, the FY2011 (ended 6/30/11) financial statements show long-term debt of about $27.5 million and debt service of $2.9 million.
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/ksu/genrel/auto_pdf/2011-12/misc_non_event/FY11AuditorReportFinancials.pdfThe audited statements for FY2012 have not yet been released. It seems like that will be around Oct/Nov. The projected budget for FY2013 (7/1/12 thru 6/30/13) shows debt service of $5.1 million. I assume that when we added the new debt to our balance sheet in FY2012, we refinanced the existing debt to current rates (cheaper to pay a lower rate) so it's difficult to make a one-to-one comparison. But if debt of $27.5 million requires an annual payment of $2.9 million at older, higher interest rates, then the projected annual payment for this year of $5.1 million would equate to at least $50 million in debt, plus whatever new debt we add during the coming year to pay for the continuing construction of WSC.