By Maggie Cassidy, News Staff
‘ Northeastern is engaged in conversation with the city of Boston about a potential partnership to renovate Franklin Park’s White Stadium, a Northeastern official said yesterday.
Under the plan, Northeastern’s football team would play its home games at the Jamaica Plain stadium, while the improvements to the venue would benefit the city’s high school sports teams, said Mike Armini, vice president for marketing and communications.
The Boston Globe reported Sunday that after running a series last month showing disparities in Boston Public Schools high school athletics, Mayor Thomas M. Menino responded by creating a nonprofit charitable foundation to revive the high school sports system.
In the article, the Globe also reported Menino ‘said he has been working for several months on a plan for Northeastern University to make multimillion-dollar improvements’ to White Stadium.
Mat Johnson, the Huskies’ senior kicker, said the possibility of moving the team’s home turf to White Stadium was briefly discussed at a team meeting.
‘It has been discussed, not in great detail,’ he said. ‘We just know that we might have an opportunity to play over there, possibly this season, or if not this season maybe next season. ‘hellip; We don’t have a definite answer.’
‘I know a lot of guys are excited to play over there on that field,’ he said.
A city spokesman could not immediately identify how long plans have been in the works, but Armini said ‘the conversations are in the early stages.’
‘Northeastern always looks for ways to partner with the city whenever we see challenges that need to be addressed. It’s part of what this university is,’ Armini said. ‘We’ve had goals of enhancing our athletic and recreational space for several years, and this is all in keeping with that.’
Armini said the conversations reflect Northeastern’s ‘tradition of being a very good citizen within the city’ and its partnership with the mayor, whose wife received an honorary diploma at the university’s Commencement ceremony May 5.
Armini also said the impact on the football team would be ‘part of the conversation.’ Among other reasons, Northeastern athletics fans often link the football team’s struggles ‘- it holds a combined record of 17-39 during the past five seasons ‘- to poor attendance at home games. Similarly, many attribute the struggling attendance to the distance between Northeastern and Parsons Field, the team’s home turf, located in Brookline about 2 miles from the Curry Student Center and about 1 mile from the nearest T stop on the Green Line’s E branch, Longwood.
White Stadium is about 3.1 miles from the student center and 1.25 miles from the nearest T stop, the Orange Line’s Forest Hills Station.
However, Johnson said he felt that because neither Parsons Filed nor White Stadium is on campus, their distances from campus are arbitrary.
‘I think a lot of people would be interested in coming out and seeing us playing out over there,’ he said, noting White Stadium has greater seating capacity ‘- 10,000 people, compared to Parsons Field’s 7,000.
In recent years, university officials have discussed the possibility of transforming Carter Playground, located on Columbus Avenue next to the Renaissance Parking Garage, into an athletic stadium. Armini declined to comment on the potential of renovating Carter in light of ongoing conversations with city officials about renovating White Stadium, saying it was too early in the conversation.
Johnson, who said fans ‘definitely play a huge role’ in the football team’s performance, said a stadium on Columbus Avenue would be ideal but he understands the difficulty of achieving such a stadium.
‘That would be amazing, just cause it’s basically on campus and I feel that it would be so much easier for people to get to games … but at the same time it would cost a lot of money. It would be hard to do, but in my mind that would be the opportune place for a stadium.’
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