Meinig Fieldhouse Project

Cornell is embarking on an ambitious project to extend and enhance the athletic facilities on campus.

For our most accomplished varsity teams to remain elite and attract top student-athletes and coaching talent, for other teams to move to the next level, and for all Cornell students to have access to sports and recreation.

We are launching a transformational facility project, which includes a new fieldhouse at the heart of campus and an adjacent outdoor turf field.

The Headlines

• The Meinig Fieldhouse offers 91,150 gsf of new indoor practice, competition and recreation space. It will accommodate full-sized men’s lacrosse, women’s lacrosse, and football fields, and provide an excellent indoor soccer training surface. Additionally, thousands of students who participate in club and intramural sports each year will enhance their physical and mental health year-round with access to this facility.
• The new 107,520 gsf multi-purpose field will provide additional access for varsity athletics, campus recreation, and club and intramural sports. This centrally located field is a fundamental piece of Cornell's commitment to being a health-promoting campus by offering spaces that inspire meaningful connections among all Cornellians.
• As part of the project, the existing field hockey competition field will be relocated to Game Farm Road.

Why Synthetic Turf

Synthetic turf is necessary for this project as it is the only option that will meet the performance, safety, and durability requirements to support the needs of Cornell University’s many varsity and club teams, intercollegiate games, and wellness and student activities that will occur on the fields. Synthetic turf is designed to mimic a good quality natural grass field including performance and safety parameters set forth by the One Turf Concept. 

More than 4,400 students are projected to use each new field annually with a robust usage schedule planned throughout the year. The synthetic fields can each be scheduled for 17 hours of usage per day, providing a high level of reliable accessibility for student and campus use. In contrast, a new natural grass field can typically survive approximately five hours per day of scheduled use between April and October in the Ithaca climate and would be unavailable in the winter and other inclement conditions.

Together, these two new synthetic turf facilities, as well as the new field hockey field, will allow Cornell to:

Recruit extraordinary students, scholar-athletes, and future leaders

Compete for Ivy championships and represent Cornell on the national stage

Secure and retain top coaching talent

Provide multipurpose recreational space supporting intramural and club sports, physical education, and student activities such as band and dance

Expand the campus’s capacity and resources to promote a healthy mind and body, build community, and reinforce athletics and physical fitness as timeless tenets of Cornell’s tradition and identity.

Feedback from the 2024 Student Wellbeing Survey demonstrates the importance of recreation and physical fitness to students’ health and wellbeing. Many students listed participation in outdoor activities as their preferred method of recreation, but shared comments like “I don't exercise as much as I should because the weather is usually not good enough and having to pay to use a gym dissuades me from going.” Broadly, students want access to spaces where they can engage socially that are easily, consistently accessible and allow for fun social and recreational activities to occur.

THE VISION

Cornell’s founding goal to “provide instruction in all branches of knowledge, [and] promote the physical, intellectual, and moral welfare of its students” has been central to the university’s mission since its establishment in 1865. Legend holds that once nine men were registered as Cornell students, the first baseball team was promptly formed. In 1875, when the men’s rowing team won the Intercollegiate Regatta, President White raced to McGraw Tower to ring the chimes, proclaiming, “You have done more to tell the world about Cornell University than [we] could have done by spending $100,000.” From this holistic vision and enthusiasm, the seeds were planted for what has become one of the nation’s most robust departments of athletics, recreation, and outdoor education.

Today, Cornell remains committed to this fundamental purpose to cultivate the vigor and humanistic spirit of our students. The development of a new indoor fieldhouse at the heart of the campus has become essential to advance this aim, to realize a comprehensive approach to student wellness, and to enhance the competitive success of Cornell varsity teams. A new fieldhouse at Cornell will enable year-round training, skills development, and competition for varsity student-athletes, and will welcome the entire Cornell community with expanded and consistent access for recreation. Named in honor of former chairman of the Board of Trustees, Peter C. Meinig ’61, the facility will rival those of Cornell’s peers, and will convey through design and function the university’s deep commitments to promote a healthy community for all students, faculty, and staff, and to achieve excellence at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.

Within our intramural and club sports programs, hundreds of students boost their mental, physical, and social wellbeing by participating in sports and activities they love. From judo to rugby to ultimate frisbee and beyond, Cornell students can find creative and competitive outlets to balance out their rigorous academic responsibilities. As a health-promoting campus, Cornell believes that physical activity is a key component to overall wellness, as evidenced by our physical education requirement.

However, our varsity and recreational programs currently face a severe shortage of indoor practice space and all-weather playing surfaces, which is exacerbated by the Ithaca climate. The Ramin Room within Bartels Hall and Schoellkopf Field are the only two turf fields available for numerous teams to train and compete. This creates a shortage of optimal practice times, requiring student-athletes to fit training sessions into disadvantageous early-morning or late-night hours amid their already busy schedules. It is common to see our lacrosse teams on Schoellkopf Field at 6am or 10pm in order to have access to a full-size field, and at times, the Ramin Room hosts three varsity programs’ speed and agility regimens at the same time. As a last resort, many programs rent space at other facilities in the local community when they cannot schedule field time on campus. Our club teams are regularly relegated to outdoor grass fields or the recreation turf field on North Campus, which severely limits the months and time they are able to safely participate in the sports and activities they truly love. Beyond practices and training sessions, the shortage of turf field spaces also creates significant barriers to hosting home games and tournaments.

The lack of indoor practice space at Cornell creates a recruiting disadvantage for our coaches and puts our teams and students at a significant competitive disadvantage versus our peers. Current athletes in many of the sports Cornell offers cannot achieve their full potential, nor improve upon Cornell’s athletic rankings and records, without proper facilities and opportunities to train. Prospective Big Red student-athletes and their families compare Cornell’s offerings, including our facilities, to multiple competitors when deciding which school they will proudly represent. Similarly, attracting and retaining top coaching talent requires an investment in our facilities; we simply must be on par with peer schools to recruit and retain top coaches.

For our most accomplished varsity teams to remain elite, and for others to move to the next level, Cornell aims to build a new indoor sports and recreation facility. Located on Tower Road, adjacent to Berman Field, this 91,150 square foot field house will provide a 360’x180’ practice turf, with a scoreboard, spectator area, and storage spaces. A mezzanine will include two team rooms, restrooms, meeting rooms, and offices. The building will accommodate NCAA regulation men’s and women’s lacrosse competitions, while also containing divider curtains so multiple groups can use the facility concurrently, year-round.

This facility will also serve club teams and recreational athletes in a multitude of activities, a significant contribution to Cornell’s commitment to wellbeing as a health-promoting campus While sports teams and competitors will likely be the most frequent users of this space, it will also prove valuable to the Big Red Band, Cornell Cheerleading, and more.

Our field hockey team, which has played on Marsha Dodson Field since 2008, will move to Game Farm Road as a standalone facility that will serve as a practice and game field adjacent to existing soccer practice fields and a short distance from the new Booth Field baseball facility.  

A top priority for Cornell’s Meakem Smith Director of Athletics and Physical Education, Dr. Nicki Moore, as well as Vice President for Student & Campus Life, Dr. Ryan Lombardi, the effort to fund this project commenced in 2020, with a core group of benefactors committing $25M toward the design and construction of this new facility. With the significant impact of the pandemic on multiple aspects of the venture, including the planning and construction timeline, availability of labor, and building material prices, costs have risen dramatically, requiring an additional effort to secure the required funding for this project. Today, we are seeking donor support to raise an additional $30M in order to bring this transformational concept to fruition. 

In recognition of the tremendous leadership provided by Peter Meinig, who served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for 10 years, this new facility will be known as the Peter C. Meinig `61 Field House. Gifts in support of this initiative can be recognized by naming elements of the facility, or other spaces within the Department of Athletics and Physical Education and Division of Student & Campus Life.

NAMING OPPORTUNITIES

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING