LOOK: Texas reveals images of new football practice facility

After years of planning and anticipation, the school finally released renderings of the planned Texas Longhorns football practice facility to replace Frank Denius Fields on Friday.

The renderings also reveal the location of the facility — south of the Rec Sports Center, which is itself just south of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, just west of the new basketball and volleyball practice facility, and north of the Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center at the current location of the School of Social Work and Child Development Center.

“UT Austin’s student-oriented facilities are designed to help our students reach their full potential and to help us attract more world-class talent,” Texas president Jay Hartzell said. “Texas Athletics is home to some of the best student-athletes in the world, and our new indoor practice facility will be designed in the right location and with the right tools to empower them to meet their full potential, in both their studies and training. As a result, we will attract even more outstanding student-athletes to work with our incredible coaches and compete at the highest levels. More broadly, the new facility will lead to campus-wide improvements by repurposing and optimizing land usage to increase support for our research and teaching missions.”

In addition to indoor and outdoor fields, the facility will also feature a three-lane sprint track, offensive and defensive lineman drill space, a hospitality area, and parking. According to Horns247, the facility will cost around $70 million and will be completed in 2025.

“Through an aggressive and fiscally responsible approach, Texas Athletics plans to continue transforming and reimagining the spaces that serve as training grounds and second homes for our student-athletes, coaches and staff into highly-functional, world-class facilities,” Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte said. “Ongoing facility investments will help us further align our physical resources with the world-class expectations that exists for one of the nation’s best departments.”

The new practice facility will replace the aging Bubble, which was a state-of-the-art facility when it was built in 2002, but has become outdated in recent years with many other top programs building better practice facilities. The logistics of getting players to Frank Denius Fields also produced a time crunch for the program, requiring bus trips before and after practice now solved by the location closer to the football offices.