Only a few weeks after the announcement of the public awareness campaign “Restore the War,” the renovations on the west side of War Memorial are already under way.
These include a reconstruction of the lower west stands, which will be completed before next season, and a club seating area and press box renovations, which will wrap up before the 2025 season.
This project has been in the works for awhile, and funding was needed from outside the University to accomplish it.
“This has definitely been a collaborative effort,” said Randy Welniak, senior Associate AD for athletics. “With the state legislature, the University of Wyoming as well as the athletic department to finally have this come to fruition.”
Because the proposal needed funding from the legislature, athletics had to work with politicians to get it done.
“The joint appropriations committee had been discussing it for the last couple of years and trying to figure out if it was something that could be discussed further on the floor of the legislature. There are several legislators that were involved in the entire process,” Welniak said.
“Mike Gierau is on the joint appropriations committee with Tom Walters as well. They were very actively involved with the discussions and talking through all the different scenarios and trying to figure out if this made sense or not,” he continued.
The legislature gave a substantial amount to the project to go along with funding from the University, but it’s not clear how much.
“I am not 100% sure how all the funding came to fruition,” said Welniak. “I don’t know the exact amounts but I do know that [the legislature] tasked us with UW athletics to raise $20 million.”
To raise this large amount of money, UW athletics relies on private donors and companies.
“We have about 29 donors to the difference makers campaign. So it was a combination of corporate support, as well as private giving from private individuals to this project,” Welniak said.
To advertise the campaign, Welniak used relationships and affiliations to start raising funds.
“We really reached out individually, between Tom Berman, our athletic director, John Stark, and myself. We actually hired Joe Gursky, former women’s basketball coach, as a consultant to help with the fundraising efforts,” Welniak said. “So really the four of us did. I’ve conducted several private meetings with individual donors and companies and made a lot of requests over the last 16 months.”
While the actual construction is just beginning, the project has already come a long way.
“This will be a great opportunity for us to do a complete renovation and tear it down and start from scratch and be able to really have a first class experience for fans,” Welniak concluded. “We’re around $17 million right now in pledges and we hope to get the final pieces of the puzzle here in place by the end of January.”
Construction will be ongoing until just before next football season.
