The north end zone of Dudley Field will be home to double-decker basketball space for the men’s and women’s teams. It’s part of the $300 million campaign to upgrade the school’s athletic facilities.

-- Renderings Provided By Vanderbilt Athletics

Double-deckers are commonplace in downtown Nashville these days — everything from a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich at Blake Shelton’s Ole Red lower Broadway venue to a ride aboard one of those slow-moving, open-air “transpotainment” party buses to one of those expensive parking garages.

Soon, Vanderbilt University will have a double-decker of its own.

In the first detailed look at the $300 million Vandy United campaign launched last year to upgrade and enhance athletic facilities, the Southeastern Conference school recently announced it will build a multi-level basketball operations center that will house double-decker men’s and women’s basketball practice facilities.

The men’s court will be on the ground floor and the women’s will occupy the second floor, combining for more than 90,000 square feet. The massive project will be located in what is currently the north endzone of Vanderbilt’s football stadium.

“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to impact Vanderbilt athletics and set our student-athletes and community up for success,” says Candice Lee, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for athletics and academic affairs and athletic director.

Vanderbilt is working on the projects with Populous, a global architecture and design firm that designed First Horizon Park for the Nashville Sounds and the new GEODIS Stadium for Nashville SC. Lee recently sat down with Al Harris, principal and senior architect at Populus to discuss current and future projects.

Both Lee and Harris use the word “land-locked” to describe Vandy’s tightly confined athletic footprint, with Harris saying such challenges often produce the most creative responses.

The 90,000-plus-square-foot facility will feature space for the men’s team on the ground floor and the women’s program on the second floor.

-- Renderings Provided By Vanderbilt Athletics

“The overall athletics neighborhood is going to be absolutely transformed when it’s all said and done,” Harris adds. “We’re going to be in a relationship with Vanderbilt for a long time and we’re absolutely thrilled about it.”

Lee later revealed the Memorial Gymnasium space vacated by the basketball teams will be turned over to the women’s volleyball program that Vandy is reviving. A coach is expected to be hired this fall, Lee says, and the team will begin competition in 2025, possibly a year sooner.

The volleyball program will be Vandy’s 17th overall and its 11th for women. Though it has been a popular club sport on campus, Vanderbilt hasn’t fielded a varsity team since the 1979 and ’80 seasons. A former basketball coach, Lee has her recruiting pitch ready for prospective future Commodores.

“To all the talented young women playing volleyball out there, you need to know that Vanderbilt will be an option for you. And we hope you’ll help us build a winning tradition here.”

But before volleyball can exist, the multipurpose basketball facility must be completed. Work will begin this summer with utility relocation, followed by project construction that is expected to be completed before the 2024 football season.

“We are literally taking an end zone of the football stadium,’’ Lee says. “The outside of it is going to be for football fans and inside is going to be for basketball and there will also be tons of multi-purpose space that we can use for events and to support the community. That is an example of being innovative within our very tight footprint.

“As our men’s and women’s basketball programs move into the new facility for their day-to-day operations, it will free up the space for us to provide everything that volleyball needs to be able to compete at the highest level from day one.”

In addition to the double-decker basketball courts, the facility will boast locker rooms and lounges, a weight room and athletic training facility for both programs.

The stacked design was a way for planners and architects to get a 90,000-square-foot facility built in a small space, an imperative considering Vanderbilt’s land-locked location.

Also, it will feature premium hospitality areas, premium seating and loge boxes for football game days, as well as a locker room for visiting football teams. There will be an expansion connecting the football stadium’s east and west concourses, plus access to Memorial Gym.

But the basketball programs will be the primary tenants.

“I’m a firm believer in (the phrase) constraints bring out the best design thinking. I’m excited to share what we’ve done with the basketball building to help leverage that proximity, make it a positive and not necessarily a negative,” says Harris, who uses the word “stacked” instead of double-decker to describe the two-storied basketball courts.

“We obviously needed courts for both men’s and women’s programs. In an ideal situation, you want these on the ground together. Given the site constraints and the limitations … we had to stack the gyms,” Harris notes.

“This is something that we’ve done before. There’s not a lot of these building types like this in the country, but we have done this before. We’re very confident that this absolutely works. This ended up providing us a very unique situation with a basketball practice facility that you typically don’t see.”

Men’s basketball coach Jerry Stackhouse and women’s coach Shea Ralph, as well as their assistants, will be on the second floor of the facility. In a story on the school’s website, both coaches said the new facility will take their programs to another level and thanked both Lee and Chancellor Daniel Diermeier for their commitment to upgrading facilities.

“For our program, being able to have world-class facilities from the standpoint of training, getting all the top equipment, being able to have more [practice] courts – they all create more opportunity for our student-athletes to get better in their development,” Stackhouse says.

“Their commitment and the commitment of all the coaches to take our programs to the next level are unmatched. You’re going to see that in the future with our new buildings and new equipment we’ll have available for our student-athletes.”

Adds Ralph: “We truly see Vandy United as our stake in the ground. It marks the beginning of a new era and is proof of our commitment to elevate the best student-athlete experience in college athletics and take our fan experience to the next level.”

Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea says these enhancements will benefit not only basketball but his program, too.

“I couldn’t be more excited for construction to begin. It marks the physical representation of the change that’s been bubbling under the surface at Vanderbilt for the last two years,” Lea says in the statement. “It’s something that we can all look to as a moment where we enter the next phase of our growth.

“What’s great about this first building is it’s going to impact everyone here in Vanderbilt Athletics. I’m so excited for Coach Stackhouse and Coach Ralph to see their programs benefit from this project. Obviously, it’s going to serve the football program as well and truly be the starting point for this Vandy United project.

“The first building for football is going to serve to enhance the fan experience here at Vanderbilt. We’re so excited to deliver an experience that the first-class fan base of Vanderbilt and Nashville deserves.”