Ten current UNLV baseball players stand around, from left, donor Anthony Marnell III, coach Tim Chambers, Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy and President Len Jessup at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the Anthony and Lyndy Marnell III Baseball Clubhouse on Monday, May 11, 2015, at Earl E. Wilson Stadium.
A map showing the plans of UNLV's Anthony and Lyndy Marnell III Baseball Clubhouse, a state-of-the-art two-story facility that will be located down the first-base line inside Earl E. Wilson Stadium.
A relationship going back more than 25 years helped lead to the development that UNLV baseball coach Tim Chambers has been talking about adding since he took the job five seasons ago.
Standing outside of Earl E. Wilson Stadium on Monday morning, a group including Chambers, UNLV President Len Jessup, Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy and donor Anthony Marnell III, announced construction plans for the Anthony and Lyndy Marnell III Baseball Clubhouse in the stadium adjacent to the Lied Athletic Complex. Work is already underway with completion expected in spring 2016.
The building itself is expected to cost $2.75 million, all publicly funded, with the university paying an estimated $750,000 for project-related costs that include leveling some ground for the foundation, setting up the utilities and widening the road for access from the Lied entrance out to East Harmon Avenue.
“This is the biggest thing to happen to this baseball program since you built this stadium,” Chambers said to the crowd and specifically Mel Wolzinger, who donated $6.6 million from the Wilson estate in the early '90s.
Chambers has long discussed adding a baseball-specific building that, like the Mendenhall Center does for men’s basketball, houses every on-campus amenity a player would need outside of attending classes. UNLV had been working on fundraising, taking small bites at a time, when Marnell, the president and minority owner of the M Resort, decided to speed things along.
“Anthony called a few weeks ago and said, ‘I’m ready, let’s do the whole thing,’ ” Kunzer-Murphy said. “So the university has a side of it … making sure it’s all ready and he’s going to build the building.”
The two-story clubhouse will cover a total of 10,000 square feet. The first floor will include a players lounge, academic area, training rooms and a team locker room, and on the second floor will be two indoor batting cages, a weight room and a patio area overlooking the field.
Kunzer-Murphy said UNLV would continue fundraising for the project, including offering naming rights to the various areas of the new building, with the hope of covering any future costs.
Marnell played baseball for two years at the University of Arizona and then had a brief run in the San Diego Padres organization. But before heading to college, the Las Vegas native played for Chambers at Bishop Gorman High from 1989-92. The relationship forged during that time was one of the driving factors that led to Marnell’s donation for a building that will bear he and his wife’s names.
“Through all the years, no matter where I was and no matter what I was going through in my life, whether it was baseball or not, Tim was always there,” said Marnell, who finished his Hospitality Administration degree at UNLV in 1998.
Chambers, who was been sidelined by a back injury for much of a disappointing 22-28 season, was fighting back tears after hugging Marnell. The fifth-year manager has also been the primary fundraising arm for the program, and the facility has been one of his major goals since coming over from the College of Southern Nevada.
“We’ve been recruiting on pictures for two and a half years, and now we’re going to recruit on pictures that are reality,” Chambers said, though junior utility man Joey Armstrong chimed in from the crowd that it had actually been three full years selling drawings of an idea.
Ten current players attended the announcement, and Marnell emphasized their role in the importance of adding the facility. From the added recruiting advantage to the program’s ability to better provide everything the players would need once they’re on campus, Marnell said he wanted to help the Rebels provide a place to get the kind of experience he has had with Chambers.
“We hope that it brings you many years of success and many young men who you turn into wonderful members of society,” Marnell said.
Jessup, who’s in his fifth month as UNLV’s president, pointed to this facility as “a great example of the kind of partnership we need at UNLV.” He’s been involved in a lot of different fundraising discussions for myriad projects as the university works toward goals to be a Tier One institution, and almost all of them require the kind of public financial help the Marnells provided.
“This is Anthony and Lyndy and their family stepping in to help us take this baseball program to the next level,” he said, “and we’re going to need that kind of support for everything that we’re doing at UNLV.”
Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.
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