COLUMBIA, Mo.—The University of Missouri will break ground on a $250 million project to renovate Memorial Stadium when it hosts Arkansas Nov. 30 for the final regular season home football game of the 2024 campaign. 

Curators gave formal approval to the project Thursday during a board meeting in Kansas City after green-lighting the architectural firm for the work in April.

The project, which will add 2,000 premium seats, including open-air and enclosed seating around the Rock M on the north end, would be completed in time for the 2026 football season, which is also the stadium’s 100th anniversary. There will also be stadium-wide improvements to concessions, bathrooms, wi-Fi, lighting and sound, as well as an enclosed event space that will allow for year-round usage.

The groundbreaking event will be largely ceremonial and will not impact the school's ability to potentially host a college football playoff game, an athletic department spokesperson said. 

“We learned that the most public facing signal of championship expectations is quality of the stadium of the university and you can see, we’re looking for championships and you can expect championships, said Bob Blitz, the St. Louis lawyer and Curator who has taken a lead role on the project. “The failure to invest in this today would create a rapid decline in what is now our rapidly improving program. Every metric that we looked at compelled us to make this investment now,” he said.

Athletic Director Laird Veatch noted in a presentation that several Southeastern Conference schools, including Tennessee and Florida were in the midst of athletic facility upgrades worth hundreds of millions of dollars, along with their longtime rivals at the University of Kansas.

Veatch said the goal remains to fund half the project through donations, and that the University was halfway to that amount. Blitz said the school was open to seeking state funding were it to become available. Proceeds gained through revenue generated by the premium seating created by the project will also help defray costs. 

Stadium seating will be at roughly 65,000 when the project is finished. Seating will not be available on the rock M hill during construction.