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President Bob Bruininks was named the "Executive of the Year" by the Mpls/St. Paul Business Journal in which the publication as a big article on him, including this side-bar about his leadership with the new stadium:
Bruininks makes Gophers’ homecoming dream a reality
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - by Andrew Tellijohn Contributing writer
Media
Bob Bruininks chaired the educational psychology department in 1982 when the University of Minnesota football team left Memorial Stadium for the Metrodome a couple miles from campus.
He won’t second-guess decision makers from that era but he has long missed the atmosphere of the Saturday contests, and perhaps more so the on-campus camaraderie between students and alumni gathering for the games.
At the time, he wasn’t in a position to influence such decisions. But when he took the reins as president from Mark Yudof in 2002, Bruininks made returning football to the university one of his first major initiatives. Not only would home games energize the campus, the university expects to generate an additional $3 million annually from stadium operations that will go directly into the athletics department. That figure doesn’t include additional revenue from parking, which will be used to pay down debt.
Kickoff
In 2002, the Legislature allocated $500,000 for the university and Minnesota Vikings to study building an on-campus, jointly operated football stadium. Both entities agreed that such a model wouldn’t work. Bruininks still wanted the Gophers back on campus, and he believed the effort needed credibility.
“I felt and still feel very strongly that we needed, at that time, to show we were serious and had the capacity to raise approximately 60 percent of the cost [for a new stadium],” he said. “So we went out to demonstrate that we could get a naming agreement.”
Bruininks and his staff created a list of businesses and individuals they thought might be potential donors and met with a handful to assess interest. High on the list was Wayzata-based TCF Financial Corp., which already had a long-standing relationship with the university.
“They seemed to be the most interested, and at that point, probably the best fit,” Bruininks said. “We had a strong relationship with them. We had, through a competitive bidding process, developed a banking-card relationship for our students and that was working very well. I think that gave us a closer connection.”
So Bruininks, in mid-2003, scheduled a meeting with CEO William Cooper and TCF’s management team. His initial proposal went well and the two sides met often for the next two years.
On March 24, 2005, the university announced that TCF had arrived at a $35 million, 25-year sponsorship agreement for the stadium. The deal also included a similar investment in academics.
TCF was interested in the deal because the university is one of the state’s most meaningful assets, said Mark Jeter, president of TCF Bank Minnesota.
“From our standpoint, there’s a natural relationship,” he said, adding that if not for Bruininks’ leadership, the naming-rights deal and the stadium efforts would have died.
“He really got it in terms of the value of the stadium on campus — bringing it back in terms of creating the right experience,” Jeter said.
Writing the game plan
With a naming-rights deal sealed, efforts turned to the legislative process. Bruininks and his team began ramping up meetings with lawmakers in an effort to drum up bipartisan support for a stadium plan that had previously received less publicity than high-buck efforts by the Vikings and Minnesota Twins.
The 2005 Legislature adjourned without discussing the stadium, but Bruininks spent the next year meeting with government officials. Finally, in April 2006, the state House of Representatives passed a bill that included the TCF naming-rights deal with student fees, parking revenues, other private donations and the sale of 2,800 acres of land to the state as sources for the funding.
The fight was not over, however. Critics questioned universities engaging in corporate naming deals and asked why the stadium’s name wouldn’t honor the state’s veterans, as the previous on-campus stadium had done. Less than a month after the House bill passed, the Senate passed a different version that stripped the TCF deal, required the name Veterans Memorial Stadium and added a statewide sports memorabilia tax.
Bruininks said he understood the reasons behind the criticisms, but added that in these days, corporate life is intertwined with the university.
“This is just a fact of life,” he said.
As the bill proceeded to a conference committee where the differences would be hashed out, he lobbied heavily for the House version. After two weeks of negotiations, the committee passed a bill that included the naming rights and the land transfer. It also slightly raised the state’s cost and decreased the student-fees contribution.
End goal and academic boon
Bruininks is quick to pass credit of the successful stadium efforts to other university officials, such as Richard Pfutzenreuter, the university’s chief financial officer and vice president, and Kathryn Brown, his chief of staff. Many officials, however, acknowledge that without Bruininks taking the lead, TCF Bank Stadium would be but a dream.
Whether it has been working with donors, regents, legislators or others involved at the university, Bruininks has been involved with every aspect of the project, said Joel Maturi, athletic director. Bruininks has been willing to fill up his schedule with stakeholder meetings to help raise funds, and he’s compromised to broker deals when need be, as well.
While Bruininks is less involved in the day-to-day door knocking Maturi has been doing across the state to raise funds in recent weeks, Bruininks has always made himself available to make phone calls and break down barriers to make those meetings happen.
“We would not be in the situation we are in if it weren’t for President Bruininks,” Maturi said. “His vision, and in many ways his courage and leadership, have gotten us to this point.”
Dave Mona, chairman of the Bloomington office of Weber Shandwick and a past-president of the University Alumni Association, also has helped with fundraising and public relations for the stadium effort. He’s been impressed with Bruininks’ leadership of the project at the Legislature, where “any doubt about his support would have been a small wedge that someone would have driven a truck through,” he said. “The legislators saw that [Bruininks] had given it thoughtful consideration and had a strong list of ideas why it was a plus.”
Mona said he also approves of Bruininks using the stadium efforts to approach new donors about supporting the academic mission of the university.
Indeed, stadium deals with Target Corp., Best Buy Co. Inc., Dairy Queen and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community also have resulted in donations of an additional $45 million for academic programs, Bruininks said. “It’s helped us get gifts for the Carlson School of Management [and] the Weisman Art Museum. The vast majority of the support has come from people who contributed to student scholarships.
“I think that’s part of the untold story of the stadium initiative that I am really proud of,” Bruininks said.
http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/01/05/focus3.html?t=printable
Go Gophers!!
Bruininks makes Gophers’ homecoming dream a reality
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - by Andrew Tellijohn Contributing writer
Media
Bob Bruininks chaired the educational psychology department in 1982 when the University of Minnesota football team left Memorial Stadium for the Metrodome a couple miles from campus.
He won’t second-guess decision makers from that era but he has long missed the atmosphere of the Saturday contests, and perhaps more so the on-campus camaraderie between students and alumni gathering for the games.
At the time, he wasn’t in a position to influence such decisions. But when he took the reins as president from Mark Yudof in 2002, Bruininks made returning football to the university one of his first major initiatives. Not only would home games energize the campus, the university expects to generate an additional $3 million annually from stadium operations that will go directly into the athletics department. That figure doesn’t include additional revenue from parking, which will be used to pay down debt.
Kickoff
In 2002, the Legislature allocated $500,000 for the university and Minnesota Vikings to study building an on-campus, jointly operated football stadium. Both entities agreed that such a model wouldn’t work. Bruininks still wanted the Gophers back on campus, and he believed the effort needed credibility.
“I felt and still feel very strongly that we needed, at that time, to show we were serious and had the capacity to raise approximately 60 percent of the cost [for a new stadium],” he said. “So we went out to demonstrate that we could get a naming agreement.”
Bruininks and his staff created a list of businesses and individuals they thought might be potential donors and met with a handful to assess interest. High on the list was Wayzata-based TCF Financial Corp., which already had a long-standing relationship with the university.
“They seemed to be the most interested, and at that point, probably the best fit,” Bruininks said. “We had a strong relationship with them. We had, through a competitive bidding process, developed a banking-card relationship for our students and that was working very well. I think that gave us a closer connection.”
So Bruininks, in mid-2003, scheduled a meeting with CEO William Cooper and TCF’s management team. His initial proposal went well and the two sides met often for the next two years.
On March 24, 2005, the university announced that TCF had arrived at a $35 million, 25-year sponsorship agreement for the stadium. The deal also included a similar investment in academics.
TCF was interested in the deal because the university is one of the state’s most meaningful assets, said Mark Jeter, president of TCF Bank Minnesota.
“From our standpoint, there’s a natural relationship,” he said, adding that if not for Bruininks’ leadership, the naming-rights deal and the stadium efforts would have died.
“He really got it in terms of the value of the stadium on campus — bringing it back in terms of creating the right experience,” Jeter said.
Writing the game plan
With a naming-rights deal sealed, efforts turned to the legislative process. Bruininks and his team began ramping up meetings with lawmakers in an effort to drum up bipartisan support for a stadium plan that had previously received less publicity than high-buck efforts by the Vikings and Minnesota Twins.
The 2005 Legislature adjourned without discussing the stadium, but Bruininks spent the next year meeting with government officials. Finally, in April 2006, the state House of Representatives passed a bill that included the TCF naming-rights deal with student fees, parking revenues, other private donations and the sale of 2,800 acres of land to the state as sources for the funding.
The fight was not over, however. Critics questioned universities engaging in corporate naming deals and asked why the stadium’s name wouldn’t honor the state’s veterans, as the previous on-campus stadium had done. Less than a month after the House bill passed, the Senate passed a different version that stripped the TCF deal, required the name Veterans Memorial Stadium and added a statewide sports memorabilia tax.
Bruininks said he understood the reasons behind the criticisms, but added that in these days, corporate life is intertwined with the university.
“This is just a fact of life,” he said.
As the bill proceeded to a conference committee where the differences would be hashed out, he lobbied heavily for the House version. After two weeks of negotiations, the committee passed a bill that included the naming rights and the land transfer. It also slightly raised the state’s cost and decreased the student-fees contribution.
End goal and academic boon
Bruininks is quick to pass credit of the successful stadium efforts to other university officials, such as Richard Pfutzenreuter, the university’s chief financial officer and vice president, and Kathryn Brown, his chief of staff. Many officials, however, acknowledge that without Bruininks taking the lead, TCF Bank Stadium would be but a dream.
Whether it has been working with donors, regents, legislators or others involved at the university, Bruininks has been involved with every aspect of the project, said Joel Maturi, athletic director. Bruininks has been willing to fill up his schedule with stakeholder meetings to help raise funds, and he’s compromised to broker deals when need be, as well.
While Bruininks is less involved in the day-to-day door knocking Maturi has been doing across the state to raise funds in recent weeks, Bruininks has always made himself available to make phone calls and break down barriers to make those meetings happen.
“We would not be in the situation we are in if it weren’t for President Bruininks,” Maturi said. “His vision, and in many ways his courage and leadership, have gotten us to this point.”
Dave Mona, chairman of the Bloomington office of Weber Shandwick and a past-president of the University Alumni Association, also has helped with fundraising and public relations for the stadium effort. He’s been impressed with Bruininks’ leadership of the project at the Legislature, where “any doubt about his support would have been a small wedge that someone would have driven a truck through,” he said. “The legislators saw that [Bruininks] had given it thoughtful consideration and had a strong list of ideas why it was a plus.”
Mona said he also approves of Bruininks using the stadium efforts to approach new donors about supporting the academic mission of the university.
Indeed, stadium deals with Target Corp., Best Buy Co. Inc., Dairy Queen and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community also have resulted in donations of an additional $45 million for academic programs, Bruininks said. “It’s helped us get gifts for the Carlson School of Management [and] the Weisman Art Museum. The vast majority of the support has come from people who contributed to student scholarships.
“I think that’s part of the untold story of the stadium initiative that I am really proud of,” Bruininks said.
http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/01/05/focus3.html?t=printable
Go Gophers!!