Alonzo Webb has been a coach without a home for each of his 18 years leading the Pitt track and field/cross country programs.

The longest-tenured coach on campus, he’s sat in meetings with multiple athletic directors who spoke hopefully of building his team the track that disappeared and never resurfaced when Pitt Stadium was demolished in 1999.

“I used to tell our recruits we were going to get a facility,” Webb said. “And it didn’t take place. So, I stopped saying it.”

Finally, he can start talking about it again.

Buoyed by a financial commitment from the university and its donors, Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke on Tuesday unveiled what Chancellor Patrick Gallagher called “concrete specificity” for Victory Heights, a $250 million, three-phase project that will house track and field, cross country, volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling teams on Pitt’s upper campus.

“The biggest step by far,” Webb said of the university’s commitment to his program. “There’s nothing even close.”

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The project will include construction of two buildings:

• A 3,500-seat arena for gymnastics, volleyball and wrestling. Those teams currently train and compete in the 69-year-old Fitzgerald Field House. Included under that roof will be a performance center, to be built next to the Pete, where 16 of the 19 Pitt athletic programs and 84% of the student-athlete population can train. The exceptions are football and men’s and women’s basketball that already have facilities at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the South Side and Petersen Events Center.

• An eight-lane, 300-meter indoor track where Pitt athletes can hold practice and meets. The 300-member Pitt band also will use the facility for rehearsal and storage. It will be built behind Cost Sports Center, which sits on Robinson Street, behind Trees Hall.

No neighborhoods or parking lots will be compromised by the project, Lyke said. But the domed rec center and, eventually, the field house and Trees Hall will disappear.

Groundbreaking for the unnamed arena and the performance center is scheduled for summer 2021, followed by the opening in fall ’23. Lyke said she hopes to open the track in ’24.

“To be here now and it is actually happening is pretty crazy,” said Keith Gavin, coach of Pitt’s ninth-ranked wrestling team. “I’ve been a part of a couple different athletic departments, and there are always ideas out there. Actually executing the ideas is what sets this one apart.

“I expect it to be a game-changer. It’s really one of the only things that we’re missing.”

Gymnastics coach Samantha Snider, who was an assistant at Arkansas in the SEC where the sport is highly regarded, said the facility will be “far and away the best (in the ACC).”

“It’s going to set our program apart because there are not many schools across the country that invest in gymnastics facilities the way Pitt athletics is going to.”

The project gained legs when Lyke invited members of the Board of the Trustees athletic committee to tour Fitzgerald Field House on a hot day in August. The facility is not air-conditioned.

“Perfectly timed in temperature,” she said, smiling.

“It’s filled with historic, amazing memories, but I know that our board realized immediately that this was not the ideal teaching environment for our coaches and our student-athletes.”

The project is moving forward, with an ambitious fundraising effort that already has begun. Lyke said 10 members of the donor-based Champions Advisory Board have stepped up with promises of six- and seven-figure donations.

Corporate sponsorship also might offset the cost. But, Lyke emphasized, “The project is not contingent on a certain percentage being raised.”

Speaking about that percentage, Gallagher said, with a smile, “As much as possible is obviously the answer you want.”

“The way this is being done,” he continued, “is the university is debt-financing the project, which is why we are going to make the commitment that this is going to happen. Particularly in the face of failed past promises to do this, it was an important step for us to make this commitment.

“If the fundraising performance isn’t there, that’s kind of a tax on our future.”

In the meantime, coaches will adjust their pitch to recruits, boasting of the new facilities.

Speaking practically, Webb is thankful the potential for collisions between runners and volleyball players, practicing simultaneously at the field house, will be eliminated.

“You’re taking your chances every time you’re going around a turn that somebody is not going to walk out on the track, not understanding what they’re facing.”

Volleyball coach Dan Fisher is especially pleased to have his athletes under one roof.

“There are times in the season where we’re lifting weights in the field house and then trudging through the snow to the practice facility (at the Pete),” he said. “Getting cold after we’ve already warmed up. I’m excited that those days are coming to an end.”

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