Todd Stewart’s to-do list is getting shorter.

The longtime Western Kentucky athletic director, who ranks 14th nationally in tenure among FBS-level ADs since taking over leadership of the program in May 2012, has marked off plenty of projects from that formidable assortment of tasks at WKU.

There’s the big-ticket items, like the school’s $5 million soccer/softball training complex and locker rooms, the $1.3 million new sound system and HD video boards inside E.A. Diddle Arena, the new $1.3 million synthetic turf surface for the baseball team at Nick Denes Field and the $1.1 million HD video board at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

There’s been plenty of projects of a more modest price tag completed during a 10-year stretch – total improvements of $15,860,000 since 2014.

And two more big items on that list will soon be checked off as well. The new $7 million football press box at Houchens-Smith Stadium is on schedule to be ready for the football team’s home opener against Eastern Kentucky on Sept. 7.

The $50 million Hilltopper Fieldhouse is slated to be completed by next summer, providing a serious upgrade to the football team as well as a numerous other sports and programs at WKU.

First, the new press box – it’s a project very much near and dear to Stewart’s heart as it provides an instant update to Houchens-Smith Stadium that will benefit both WKU and visitors to the campus.

“I just think that’s a long time coming,” Stewart said of the press box. “That won’t touch as many athletes as the indoor fieldhouse will touch, but it will touch a lot of people. It just seemed to me that where football is right now and the success that we’ve had and the national TV games that we’ve had and you literally still have media and coaches going up through the stands to get to their seats in the press box just did not do the program justice. That is not Division I, certainly not successful Division I.

“Now to do a 180 and have a state-of-the-art press box where working media – local, regional and national – can come in and actually cover the game in good conditions. There was no climate control in the old press box. It could be brutally hot on a September afternoon and then it could be brutally cold in November. Now it won’t be, it will be 72 degrees every day.

“And I think for the coaches too, it’s just more efficient now. They’ll be able to access the press box and their sideline and then their locker room in a much quicker and much safer fashion. Nothing ever happened, but you just don’t want coaches, particularly the visiting coaches, going up through the stands. That’s not ideal. That situation will improve, and I think it will just represent WKU so much better getting that done.”

The ongoing construction of new fieldhouse has necessitated some temporary solutions. Because of the size of the new building, WKU’s baseball clubhouse and hitting facility had to be torn down with plans to be included in the new Hilltopper Fieldhouse. That leaves the baseball team in what Stewart called “a transition year” as they move into Diddle for the 2024-25 school year and take over the locker rooms recently vacated by the softball program. Temporary hitting facilities will be utilized for outdoor workouts, with some access available at the Bowling Green Hot Rods’ facility and the option of getting in indoor work on the WKU softball team’s batting cages as well.

“It will be better than it was before,” Stewart said of the baseball facilities within the Hilltopper Field house. “They’ll have a brand-new locker room, brand-new coaches’ offices, weight room, the hitting facility will all be brand-new, right there. And what’s neat about that is the coaches’ offices will all be on the second level, and they’ll all have a patio, and what we’ll do is on game day we’ll make that a premium area and we’ll sell that so that people can sit up and almost have a suite-type effect where you sit up in an elevated area and look down on the field. So that will be huge. Our baseball program, when that’s done, will be in a great, great spot.

“It also benefits the band. The band has a place to practice. And our forensics program and esports will have offices in there, so it’s not just athletics. It’ll be a win-win for a lot of people.”

When complete, the new fieldhouse will also free up space in Diddle when the baseball team moves back out.

“Volleyball, for example, they don’t have a film room,” Stewart said. “So they watch film in their locker room. It works, but that’s a perennial top-25 program. There probably aren’t many top-25 programs that are watching film in their locker room. It just gives us some options. We won’t do anything without thinking it through, but probably some combination of offices and some team areas too.”

The list is shrinking, but items still remain including a projected $1 million new track surface, a $700,000 football team meeting room, new baseball lights, updates to the men’s and women’s basketball locker rooms, turf for the softball field and a golf outdoor short game/putting area – each with a projected price tag of $500,000 – plus that potential $100,000 volleyball film and meeting room.

So far, that’s the wish list part of the upgrades at WKU – the funding for those projects is not yet in place. Stewart hopes it will be soon.

“The good thing with the facilities is that everything that we have done since about 2014 coupled with what’s ongoing, a lot of categories you can either put into a need or a want, and there is a difference,” Stewart said. “We say here that comparison is the enemy of happiness. We can all find somebody who has something better than what we have. But if we objectively look around, we can also find a lot of people that don’t have it near as good as what we have.

“I tell our coaches you can have anything you want – you can’t have everything you want. We’ve all collectively worked together in prioritizing what’s a need versus what is a want. I think we’ve really checked off almost all the needs. But there’s still some other things that we need to do. The men’s and women’s basketball locker rooms, they definitely need a refresh. They’re not bad, they’ve very functional and they work well, but those really haven’t been altered a whole lot in almost 15 years. That’s something that we need to do. The track was put down in 2008, and obviously that has a shelf life that is about to end.

“There’s always things that come up, but I really feel like we’re pretty close to having every program from a facilities standpoint where they need to be and certainly in probably as good a spot as they’ve ever been.”