Kibbie Dome - Construction

Construction

The stadium was built in stages and took several years to complete. Originally, the new football stadium was to be outdoors and seat over 23,000 spectators, with an adjacent 10,000 seat indoor arena for basketball. The PCAA conference had been launched in 1969 and Idaho was attempting to join, but political wrangling in the state legislature and subsequent budget cuts caused a change in the scope of the stadium project. This ensured that Idaho could not make the move to the PCAA; the Vandals remained in the Big Sky Conference with the other state schools, Idaho State and new member Boise State.

The revised plan was for a smaller capacity football stadium, to be enclosed to allow use as a basketball arena (and indoor track and tennis as well). This multi-purpose concept had been recently used at Idaho State in Pocatello, where the Minidome (now Holt Arena) had opened in 1970.

Construction on the concrete grandstands started in February 1971, after a fire destroyed the previously condemned wooden Neale Stadium in November 1969. The stadium, which opened in 1937, had been condemned the summer before the 1969 season due to soil erosion beneath the grandstands. The Vandal football team played its limited home schedule for the next two seasons at WSU's Rogers Field in Pullman.

After a fire significantly damaged Rogers Field's south grandstand in April 1970, WSU moved all of its 1970 and 1971 home games to Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane, but the Vandals remained at Rogers in Pullman for four "home" games in 1970. The Vandals' game with WSU on September 19 in Spokane was dubbed the "Displaced Bowl." A lopsided 44-16 win for the Cougars, it was WSU's only victory in a stretch of 22 games.

Back in Moscow, weather-related construction delays in the spring put the new "Idaho Stadium" a month behind schedule. The 1971 Vandals played their first two "home" games well away from campus, in Boise for the opener and Spokane two weeks later. Uncompleted, the stadium debuted on October 9 with a 40-3 victory over Idaho State before 14,200; it was the first football game on campus in nearly 3 years. The Vandals went 8-3 in 1971, which included a school-record eight game winning streak, and won the Big Sky title. For its first four seasons (1971–74), the stadium was outdoors. In the summer of 1972, a Tartan Turf field was installed over a four-inch asphalt bed, with a roll-up mechanism behind the west end zone. The one-piece field was the first in the world. In November 1974, approval was finally granted by the board of regents to enclose the stadium. The arched roof and vertical end walls were completed in time for the 1975 football season's home opener on September 27, a deflating 14-29 loss to Idaho State in front of 14,079.

The enclosed stadium was renamed that year for William H. Kibbie, a construction executive from Salt Lake City and a primary benefactor of the project; he contributed $300,000 in 1974 to initiate the funding drive. Bill Kibbie (1918–88), originally of Bellevue in Blaine County, was a UI student for less than a month in 1936 when he withdrew due to family hardship. He entered the construction business, then served as a B-24 pilot in World War II, and eventually headed JELCO (later EMKO), a major contracting company in Utah. The acronym "ASUI" is for the "Associated Students of the University of Idaho," the student government.

When the university announced it would enclose its football stadium, the fledgling Trus-Joist Company of Boise bid on and won the project. While steel and aluminum were the products of the day for domes and large unsupported buildings, Trus-Joist saw the UI stadium as a chance to demonstrate the strength, durability, and economy of their engineered wood products. From the final design to the end of construction, the enclosure project took just 10 months and $1 million to complete. In 1976, the Kibbie Dome roof won the "Structural Engineering Achievement Award" from the American Society of Civil Engineers. TJ International, the successor to Trus-Joist, was acquired by Weyerhaeuser in late 1999.

Following the first indoor football season, the asphalt base underneath the field was covered with tartan rubber in January 1976. The first basketball game was played on January 21st, and the inaugural Vandal Invitational indoor track meet was held three days later.

The Kibbie Dome's roof spans 400 feet (122 m) from sideline-to-sideline, and its maximum height is 150 feet (46 m) above the hashmarks. (Holt Arena, on the campus of Idaho State University in Pocatello, has an opposite geometry: its arched roof spans the length of the football field, rather than its width, resulting in a very low roof at the end lines and goal posts.)

Soon after completion, problems arose with the roof's exterior. The 4.5-acre (1.8 ha) outer surface was applied as a sprayed foam, and was found to be unsuitable for the extended annual temperature range of northern Idaho. The significant expansion and contraction caused fractures; leaks were occurring and wood rot was a potential problem by 1980. Various stopgap measures were taken to stop the leaks in 1981. After an extended period of finger-pointing and threatened legal action, an out-of-court settlement was reached. A new superstructure with a composite roof was built over the original. Completed in the fall of 1982, the second roof shielded the first and solved the problem.