Cornell coaches look forward to more spaces to play as new indoor fieldhouse faces approval process

Cornell University is ramping up its permitting process for Meinig Fieldhouse Indoor Sports and Recreational Center on Tower Road in anticipation of receiving final approvals for the $55 million, 90,000-square-foot project this fall.

Meinig Fieldhouse (pronounced MY-neeg), named in memory of former Board of Trustees chair and university benefactor Peter C. Meinig ’61, will accommodate a field that will be programmed to support women’s and men’s lacrosse competitions; a varsity soccer pitch and/or varsity football field for practices; and campus recreation, club and intramural sport teams activities.

The proposed building will also include a mechanical room, restrooms, a training room and storage on the ground floor; two team rooms, restrooms, an area for elevated filming and mechanical spaces on the second-level mezzanine, accessible by both stairs and elevator; and on each level an area for a limited number of spectators.

In addition to the indoor field, Cornell’s plans include a new outdoor sports field with artificial turf located next to the fieldhouse.

The limit of disturbance is proposed to be approximately seven acres in total, with 5.8 acres in the city and 1.2 acres in the town of Ithaca. The project will need approvals from both municipalities. 

For the city, the anticipated schedule is as follows, as outlined by Fisher Associates Landscape Architecture, the firm handling the project’s municipal approvals: State Environmental Quality Review in July, consideration of preliminary site plan approval in August, and zoning variance review with the Town of Ithaca Zoning Board of Appeals and consideration of final site plan approval, both in September. 

The project site is on Central Campus, in the area currently occupied by Robison Alumni Fields, with Tower Road to the north, the Robert J. Kane Sports Complex field to the east, Bartels Hall/Newman Arena to the south and Weill Hall to the west.

Meinig Fieldhouse will meet National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) standards for both men’s and women’s lacrosse, allowing those teams to host games inside.

The field is not designed for competition in other varsity sports.

“It’s not wide enough for soccer and not the right surface for field hockey. It’s not tall enough for softball or baseball,” Meakem Smith Director of Athletics and Physical Education at Cornell University Nicki Moore explained.

“I’m excited about the external design of the building. I think it looks really cool,” Moore said. “It feels like it falls into the same design family as the Gates Building, and it kind of looks like it’s floating a little bit.”

“I really like that we designed it to allow for some natural light to come in,” she added. “There is some visibility from the outside, so you can see what’s going on inside. I think that will make an inviting space, with more continuity from indoors to outdoors.”

Creating an inviting space for the wider Cornell community is important to Moore.

“I like that there are two entrances, one on North Tower Road as well as on the south side,” she said. While the entrance to the south faces the university’s athletic fields and facilities, the north one is more open to the other parts of campus.

“It’s intentionally welcoming,” Moore said.

There are too many teams and campus groups currently sharing the university’s outdoor sports fields and indoor training spaces, and the schedule to use those spaces is often packed all day long, from morning to night, Moore said.  

The university’s soccer teams, for example, practice exclusively on grass unless bad weather hits. “So then, they’re lacking a surface to practice on,” Moore said. “As soon as you add a couple additional teams, you have to shorten the amount of time everybody gets.”

“Activities get bumped later and later, and sometimes varsity teams won’t start practicing until 10 at night, you know? It’s also happening to club and intramural sports,” Moore said. “Availability of all-weather space should normalize scheduling a great deal.”

She said that having an indoor option will also help alleviate the stress of practicing in inclement weather.

“Our student athletes and coaches are accustomed to playing outdoors in very cold weather,” she said. The university has a policy for determining when the weather is so cold that it becomes dangerous, but more frequently it is other weather conditions that create problems.

“If you’ve got lightning or any sort of safety-related issue, you have to go inside,” Moore said.

Keeping the grass fields in playable condition is a big consideration as well. “Especially if it’s wet,” Moore said, “you might damage them significantly by practicing on them. That’s another indicator you have to go inside.”

“And then you have the sort of psychological battle that we anticipate having this indoor space will reduce,” she added. “As tough as our student athletes are, it still can be really awful. For the vast majority of the population, no one wants to practice when it’s snowing sideways or hailing or really cold. It’s kind of miserable, so to know that you’ve got a climate-controlled space, so you’re not having to exert a lot of mental energy dealing with the elements, that frees up a lot of mental space to be able to focus on actual skill development and competition, as opposed to having to focus on how cold your hands or feet are.”

A ‘game-changer’ for Cornell lacrosse 

Of all the groups that will be affected by the new fields, Cornell’s varsity lacrosse teams perhaps stand to gain the most from the additional playing space.

“I’ve been coaching at Cornell for 27 years, and from my perspective it’s such a fantastic facility. To allow the lacrosse teams to practice indoors is a game-changer,” said Jenny Graap, Karin Bain Kukral ’82 head coach of Cornell women’s lacrosse.

Graap said she feels “absolute joy and excitement” for the new facility. “[I’m] just thrilled that not only Cornell University but that the generous alumni committed to build this. It just seems like a fantastic effort by many to make this happen.”

The Cornell Big Red men’s and women’s lacrosse teams are NCAA Division I teams and members of the Ivy League athletic conference.

Meinig Fieldhouse has the necessary dimensions for NCAA varsity-level collegiate lacrosse games, giving the teams the ability to practice and compete indoors. The required field size for women’s lacrosse competition, in particular, is larger than fields for other sports, including men’s lacrosse.

“That feels really comfortable and assuring, that the facility is respecting the dimensions,” Graap said.

With competition beginning in February, lacrosse players at Cornell have played in some very challenging conditions.

“Currently, we are at the will of the weather in upstate New York,” said Connor Buczek, Cornell’s men’s varsity lacrosse coach.

The 2024 season had some especially bad conditions throughout.

“We probably would have played upwards of six or seven games indoors based on the weather that we had,” Graap said. “It’s more than I would have thought, to be honest.”

For Graap, the women’s game Feb. 17 against the University of California, Berkeley, stands out as particularly difficult.

“At our game with Cal Berkeley, we had a whiteout snowstorm,” said Graap. “Into the second quarter we could no longer see the restraining lines and the crease. We couldn’t see the critical lines on the field.”

Cornell ended up winning that game 13-7, but the game stands out to Graap as an example of weather getting in the way of competition.

“The grounds crew was able to sweep the field and get that layer of snow off, so the second half was much better,” she said, “but we shouldn’t have that challenge of the elements.”

Safety can also be an issue.

“To be able to take a competition indoors and avoid any slipping or ice or snow, or anything that might be potentially dangerous, is just wonderful,” Graap said.

Rival teams traveling from afar to play at Cornell can be assured a predictable game time once an indoor facility is available.

“It’s a wonderful option, as opposed to having to reschedule a game or having an opponent have to try to extend their stay in New York, or to try to find another date to play the game,” Graap said. “These are all very difficult constraints when trying to set up the competition schedule.”

Will the additional fields allow the coaches to train better teams?

“Big time,” Buczek said. “We’ve always appreciated the weather and made it a little bit of the ethos of the team that we play through whatever the external factors may be, but certainly it’s nice to have the stability to know you won’t ever get snowed out or have to deal with thunder and lightning. It’s a new world for us.”

The fieldhouse project will create more stability and certainty within the day-to-day schedule of the team, said Buczek. “It will be nice to have the space and necessary amenities to take care of what we need to, whether that’s practice or competitions,” he said.

Both lacrosse coaches said the new facility will help recruitment efforts.

“I think it will certainly help to have a nice, shiny building, a first-class facility,” Buczek said. “It shows the commitment of the university to the success of our athletic programs. I think it was done the right way, and it will be a landmark achievement for us to have a beautiful building.”

An ongoing artificial turf debate

The field will have artificial turf, a fact that one local group is raising concerns about.

Zero Waste Ithaca, a group of local environmental activists, opposes the use of artificial turf at Meinig Fieldhouse for multiple reasons, including health and environmental concerns.

On the issue of health, the group cites the case of six athletes who died from glioblastoma after playing most of their careers with the Philadelphia Phillies, a Major League Baseball team that for decades competed on artificial turf in Veterans Stadium.

“It feels very similar to the vaccination issue, whether you believe that vaccinations are mostly helpful or mostly harmful,” Moore said, “and it feels like there is sort of evidence artificial turf could cause health-related issues, but depending upon what your position is, you could find evidence.”  

Regarding the concern about plastics, Moore said that the turf that Cornell plans to use for Meinig Fieldhouse and the adjacent outdoor field passes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tests.

“We’ve actually demonstrated our proclivity to reuse and recycle turf that we’ve had down before,” Moore said, adding that recycling artificial turf is becoming more and more of a common practice.

Documents submitted recently to the City of Ithaca Planning Board pointed to two existing facilities that currently recycle the same type of artificial turf planned for use in the Meinig Fieldhouse project.

The university also pointed to two recent projects that it says demonstrate the school’s commitment to recycling and reusing artificial turf. Removal of recent synthetic turf projects at Cornell included the Schoellkopf Synthetic Turf Replacement project from 2016, which included sand and rubber infill reuse that was extracted from the existing field and used on the new field. The turf was repurposed by Artificial Grass Recycling Corporation.

Also, portions of the outfield synthetic turf from the Hoy Baseball Field 2023 project were reclaimed and used in the indoor hitting facility at Booth field. The turf and rubber and sand infill were sent to ReTurf, an artificial turf reuse company based in Statesville, North Carolina.

Both lacrosse coaches agreed that within their sport, playing on artificial turf fields has long been the norm.

“Certainly, some natural grass fields exist, and it’s awesome when they do, but just about everybody in the Northeast is on artificial turf,” Buczek said. “It’s easier to maintain and manage. Very few places have natural grass; it’s more the exception than the rule.”

“The Ithaca climate doesn’t make sense for grass,” he added. “Whether it’s frozen or snow or rain, the artificial turf manages the weather a whole lot better, and for us it’s not much of a debate.”

“We’ve played lacrosse on Schoellkopf Field for years and years, so we’re used to playing on artificial turf,” Graap said. “I think the technology of the artificial turf — where we are now — there’s been a lot of innovation.”

“The amount of games we’ve had on natural grass are very few,” she added, “and it’s usually schools south of the Mason-Dixon line that have natural grass. … Even at the high school level, there are just so many turf fields now.”

All documents submitted by Cornell related to the Meinig Fieldhouse project can be found at cityofithaca.org/DocumentCenter/Index/1647. 

More information about Zero Waste Ithaca’s opposition to the project is located on the group’s website, zerowasteithaca.org.

At the time of publication, a City of Ithaca Planning Board public hearing regarding Meinig Fieldhouse was to be held June 25. Though Tompkins Weekly will not be able to include coverage of the hearing by the time of publication, the video of the meeting can be viewed on the city’s YouTube page, which can be found at @CityofIthacaPublicMeetings.