ATHENS — Since Sanford Stadium opened in 1929, it has been reshaped, expanded and modernized into one of college football’s premier venues. In recent years, locker rooms have been rebuilt, concourses widened, lights upgraded and premium seating added.
But one original feature has gone mostly untouched for nearly a century: a concrete culvert, which also houses a sewer line, buried beneath the stadium.
The culvert — which channels water from Tanyard Creek east into the Oconee River — was built the same year Georgia hosted Yale in the first football game at Sanford. Nearly 100 years later, it remains largely as it was.
That’s about to change, with a $14 million project set to overhaul the hidden infrastructure.
Athens-Clarke County and the University of Georgia Athletics Association are preparing to repair and replace portions of the culvert and upsize the aging sewer line.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The work includes two phases. The first, recently completed near Oconee Hill Cemetery, replaced a segment that collects sewage from more than 1,300 acres, including downtown and much of the UGA campus. The second, beginning in 2026, will replace 1,000 feet of pipe directly beneath Sanford Stadium, upgrading the line’s diameter from 18 inches to 30.
On Tuesday, Athens-Clarke County commissioners unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding with the athletics association to allow the project to move forward. Construction is slated to begin in spring 2026 and wrap up by year’s end.
Athens-Clarke County will reimburse the UGA Athletic Association for the sewer portion of the project, which is anticipated to be about $12.8 million.
“At this time, we do not expect this project to have any impact on football or stadium operations” in 2026, a UGA spokesperson said Wednesday.
Sanford Stadium’s original location — a natural valley between North Campus and the Science Campus — was chosen in the late 1920s in part to reduce construction costs. Stands were built into the hills alongside Tanyard Creek, with the concrete double-box culvert constructed to let water flow beneath the stadium.
The total price tag for the original stadium was $360,000 (about $6.6 million today) for a capacity of 30,000. Major expansions began in the late 1940s. Now, nearly a century later, Sanford holds 93,033 fans, the ninth-largest stadium in the country.
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