Marshall University may be forced to make an $8 million investment in its new baseball stadium before construction can even begin.
As reported by Chuck Landon of The Charleston Gazette-Mail, Marshall paid the city of Huntington $460,000 for the property before it was discovered the site was below the flood plain. That meant purchasing truckloads of dirt to raise the entire field by 2 feet.
The original soil also had to be tested to make sure it wasn’t contaminated. Old water and gas pipes were discovered underground and will have to be removed.
On top of that, Marshall paid an architectural firm $1.9 million for plans that are now going to be edited to lower the cost of the baseball stadium.
The bottom line is that Marshall, which has only $3 million in cash and pledges on hand, will need to spend nearly three times that on the site alone, according to the university's board of governors.
