Inside look at Penn State football’s Beaver Stadium during $700M renovation
Penn State is in the midst of a significant renovation project on Beaver Stadium — one that could add up to $700 million — that is expected to be finished before the 2027 season. And on Saturday, during the annual Blue-White game, both the media and public got its first glimpse inside.
Although renovations technically started ahead of the 2024 season, such as those involving winterization, significant construction officially began after the season in January. The press box was demolished that month, as work has been ongoing on the stadium’s west side.
The side currently looks much different with lower bleachers, a steel structure behind it and not much else.
The structure for the first phase of the project has begun going up this spring, with temporary seating to follow on the west side. Those seats, along with temporary seating in the northeast and southeast corners of the stadium, are scheduled to be in place this summer with a target date of Aug. 1.
There will be roughly 7,900 seats displaced by the demolition that took place in January (about 6,100 season tickets and 1,800 student tickets), but all of those will be replaced with the temporary seating.
That temporary change will eventually be replaced by a brand new structure that features premium seating and seats that will be at least 100 feet closer to the field.
The structure itself will be 30 feet higher than the previous iteration of the west side, and will include stadium seating on top of the premium sections. Those seats, while not having built-in chair backs, will have roughly 25% more room per seat than what the stadium currently has.
The current seats are not available for use during Saturday’s Blue-White game.
Premium seating on the west side — where it hadn’t existed previously — will be 25% of the total seating on that part of the stadium. That will include club suites, loge suites and a lower bowl that has chairback seating for the suites and clubs, along with additional chairback seats that can be purchased individually.
The premium seats will include two clubs — the Marzano Club and the Schuyler Family Club, named after the two families (one of which is former Penn State board of trustees’ chairman Matthew Schuyler’s) that made multi-million dollar donations to the renovation project.
The former will feature 35,000 square feet of usable indoor space and can hold a 1,000-person seated event, allowing for it to be used year-round. On game days it will come with 2,500 seats for the game.
The Schuyler Family Club will feature 30 loge suites that will also include a back bar and will occupy the chairback seating from roughly the 30-yard line to the opposite 30-yard line.
There will also be eight 1,200-square-foot founders level suites. All of the clubs will be all-inclusive. No specifics on pricing have been released.
The west side will also feature a welcome center for the university that will serve as the beginning of all tours of Penn State once construction is finished.
The renovation will ultimately provide new amenities, expanded concourses, upgraded seating options, improved infrastructure, etc. Although construction is expected to last until the start of the 2027 season, the Nittany Lions are still anticipating playing all their home games at Beaver Stadium — and temporary seating isn’t expected to dip total attendance below 100,000.
