SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Additional seating, a new press box and new concessions are key elements to the $42 million renovation project at Meade Stadium, home of the University of Rhode Island’s football and lacrosse programs, according to renderings of the updated stadium provided to Providence Business News on Monday.
The upcoming renovations to Meade, which will completely replace the 52-year-old stands and press box – as well as make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act – is the largest piece of
URI’s $82 million multiyear endeavor to upgrade multiple athletics facilities on campus. Other major fixes and upgrades to be made include the Slade track and field that is more than 30 years old and unusable for competition, the soccer fields, the Beck baseball field, the Tootell Aquatic Center and softball field.
Two years ago, Gov. Daniel J. McKee provided URI $65.8 million in the state fiscal budget toward those athletic facilities’ renovations. URI Director of Athletics Thorr Bjorn
told PBN at the time the financial boost the university received to fix the fields was “transformational” for the athletics department and was “desperately needed.”
Afterward,
URI launched a $20 million fundraising campaign to help the state land-grant school finance the balance of the project.
According to the renderings, the stadium’s main stands opposite of The Ryan Center will have more seats. URI Associate Athletic Director Shane Donaldson told PBN on Monday the new stands will have a capacity of 5,000, including 800 chairback seating. The chairback seats will have multiple shades of blue forming the letters “URI,” a la the “RIFC” lettering on the upper deck seats at Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket.
Overall, the stadium’s capacity will grow from around the current 5,770 maximum to about 6,500, Donaldson said. Also, the press box itself will be a “key area” to Meade’s renovation, Donaldson said. Along with installing an elevator for access, Meade’s new press box, Donaldson said, will have roof access for team film and additional broadcast cameras, and a control room for video board operations. Currently, those video board controls are in a structure under the stands, Donaldson said, and television cameras have to occupy some upper seating areas at Meade.
[caption id="attachment_499921" align="alignright" width="387"]
A RENDERING shows an upgraded entrance to the University of Rhode Island's Meade Stadium. / COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND[/caption]
Plus, Donaldson said the press box configuration allows URI to reclaim multiple suites on the Ryan Center side of the stadium that had to be used for replay the last several seasons and sell them to the general public for games.”
That’s a potential revenue stream coming in, along with more tickets sold and additional fan capacity,” Donaldson said. “We more or less have outgrown what we can do with the Meade stands. This renovation will make every everything much more aesthetically pleasing, but also going to pick up additional space for fans as opposed to us taking it for operational purposes.”
Increased capacity at Meade Stadium will help meet the growing demand for tickets to attend URI football games, which Donaldson said the demand “is there” based on the program’s recent success.
Last year, the Rams won the Coastal Athletic Association conference title and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Playoffs. It was the first time since 1985 that URI football qualified for the NCAA playoffs.
Additionally, URI football already sold out its season ticket packages for the upcoming season, Donaldson said. “Making the postseason is going to drive an increase in the interest in the program as a whole,” he said.
With the extensive work to be done at Meade, URI will have to play its 2026 home schedule elsewhere – as
Bjorn previously told PBN. Donaldson said Monday he imagines formal plans on a 2026 home schedule in an alternative venue will be finalized by this fall.
Donaldson declined to say who URI is discussing with as possible “home” fields a year from now, but did say the university has had conversations “with multiple venues.”
“There’s nothing official at this point,” he said.
Two football stadiums in Rhode Island have seating capacities greater than Meade. One is Brown Stadium at Brown University in Providence, which has 20,000 seats, is celebrating its centennial season this fall and is already fitted for football.
The other is Centreville Bank Stadium, the new 10,500-seat venue that is home to Rhode Island FC and has hosted multiple rugby matches to date, including
the 2025 Major League Rugby Championship match in late June. Bjorn, when previously asked by PBN if Centreville Bank Stadium was a possible interim destination for URI football, said it would be “a great option” depending on usage cost.
As far as the other athletic fields, Donaldson said the new surface at the Beck baseball field was installed last fall. He said that the ongoing work at the baseball, soccer and softball fields are all press box projects to help with streaming broadcasts.
Ground is also expected to break on the new $12.1 million Slade outdoor track on Sept. 1, Donaldson said. The fundraising on that $20 million balance is ongoing.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on X at @James_Bessette.
