The pending destruction of Georgia Tech’s Edge Center and the ensuing construction of the Fanning Center will alter the official capacity of Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Sections 218 and 219, and a part of section 217, in the stadium will be permanently removed to fit the new Fanning Center, a 100,000 square-foot facility, into the northeast corner of the historic venue. Bobby Dodd Stadium’s capacity, starting with the 2024 season, will be reduced from 55,000 to 51,913.
The change in capacity is the first for the venue since 2003, when seating increased from 46,000 to 55,000. Since the start of the 2017 season, the Jackets have played in front of 50,000 fans at home only six times, with four of those six games being against rival Georgia.
Tech season ticket holders whose seats are located in those sections have been notified by Tech’s ticket office and have been offered relocations to other sections of the stadium. Construction work to remove sections 218 and 219, and part of 217, is scheduled to begin this week.
Named for alumnus Thomas Fanning, the Fanning Center was approved by the Georgia Board of Regents in 2022. Tech athletic director J Batt said in March that more than $85 million was raised to construct the building which will house offices, meetings spaces and a player’s lounge for the football program, strength-and-conditioning space, a dining hall, nutrition rooms, sports-science and data-analytics areas, sports -edicine and recovery rooms, a sports-science lab and more.
The Fanning Center is expected to be completed in 2026.
“If you begin and end every decision-making process with, ‘What’s the best for our student-athletes?’ You can never go astray. This building will be the foundation,” Batt said March 25 about the Fanning Center. “If we begin and end on this foundation, we’re in a very good place. We will continue to build that brand back to where it belongs, and this building goes a long way toward that.”
The decrease in capacity is the second major change for Bobby Dodd Stadium in the past nine months. In August, the Georgia Board of Regents approved changing the official name of the stadium to Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field.
