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Architects chosen for Coastal Carolina ballpark expansion

Coastal Carolina UniversityCoastal Carolina University is expanding Watson Stadium in an attempt to raise the profile of the baseball program, and architects have been chosen transform the ballpark into something that could potentially host NCAA Super Regionals.

The architects: a local (Greenville) firm, Michael Keeshen & Associates, is partnering with Populous (Kansas City).

The goal, according to CCU athletic-department officials, is to expand Watson Stadium from its current capacity of 850 to a 2,500-seat facility that could be expanded to 5,000 should the school host a Super Regional. The team actually has hosted Super Regionals twice in recent years, but the small confines of Watson forced play at BB&T Coastal Field, home of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans (High Class A; Carolina League).

“What will be exciting is for us to sit down as a planning group and really share our vision with them,” Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek told the Sun-News. “They showed us some preliminary renderings just off of them visiting our campus and kind of taking our facility the way it is now and where it sits. But we didn’t have a chance through the selection process to share what our vision was for that facility. That will be the first couple meetings is us really sharing our vision, and they’ll take that and start really designing our facility.”

A tentative timeline has work beginning after the 2012 season before a grand reopening in 2014. The team would play elsewhere for the 2013 season.

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