Cookeville City Council Members are excited at the prospect of partnering with Tennessee Tech on its stadium upgrades, but want to know more.
Charles Womack said that Tennessee Tech is vital to the community of Cookeville and wants to see it prosper. However, he said it needs to make sense financially before the city commits.
“We need to find out exactly of what’s going to be needed, how long of a time frame would need to have a commitment and go from there,” Womack said. “I mean everyone I’m sure on the city council is enthusiastic about helping Tennessee Tech, but the devil is the details. How much is it going to cost?”
Womack said that the city has a limited amount of money to spend on things, but Cookeville has been seeing better finances. He said that during the pandemic, sales tax revenue has gone up substantially so the city has more money than it did two or three years ago.
Womack said that he’d like to see the stadium get some state-of-the-art seating. Council Member Mark Miller said that he’d like to see more events like the Blue Cross Bowl that get people to go to Tucker Stadium.
“I would like to see that stadium full every weekend, or multiple times a week,” Miller said. “Because that means people are out, they’re spending money, they’re having fun in our community.”
Womack said that upgrades to the stadium would be good a way to entice people from other parts of the state to come to Cookeville and spend money. He said that money could increase the sales tax revenue and power local businesses.
Both Womack and Miller said that the next steps are to continue conversations with the university to see where to go from here. They said they want to see what Tech needs, and how the city can best contribute to addressing them.
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