Jeff and Sharon Stevens of El Paso have given $10 million toward the north end zone project at Arizona Stadium, athletic director Jim Livengood announced this afternoon.

“What it will do for this department is hard to measure,” Livengood said.

Livengood has a $378 million master plan to improve facilities across many sports, with improvements to the north end zone — including a new scoreboard and a four-story building for the football offices and locker rooms — pegged at a cost of about $85 million.

The new end zone would replace the bleacher seating with about 5,000 more-expensive seats while slightly increasing capacity. Other parts of this first phase of the master plan are improved stadium lighting, an extension of the Jimenez practice facility, and upgrades to the loge, scholarship suites, east side seating and the Dan Dunlap Stadium Club.

“While much heavy lifting is still ahead, the money the Stevens have given is just a great start toward that effort,” Livengood said.

The first phase of the project will need Board of Regents’ approval in January.

“We didn’t look at it as a building to put your name on, but as an investment in the university and the athletic department and the football program,” said Jeff Stevens, who is the president and chief operating officer of Western Refining, which is based in El Paso.

“If Arizona is going to continue at a high level of Division I football, these are the types of facilities that need to be built. We feel very strongly that this is the right time, the right commitment.”

The first phase of the project benefits football directly, but the other sports will benefit from the football team’s move out of McKale Center, creating more space for everyone.

“I have been excited about this for weeks when I heard about this vision coming to reality,” said football coach Mike Stoops. “For our program to grow — and for all the other programs to grow — this is a necessity in modern day collegiate sports.”

The Stevens, who are both UA grads, previously contributed $3 million toward UTEP’s new basketball practice facility — the Foster Stevens Basketball Complex — which opened this spring.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Jeff Stevens, Jim Livengood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.