Under UA President Alfred Atkinson, the Board of Regents decided to use a $45,000 surplus from President Shantz's building program for an initial outlay for the East Stadium.
Roy Place designed concrete stands that replaced the wooden bleachers and increased the stadium capacity to 11,000 persons counting the West Stadium.
The concrete stands were 150 feet in length. Nine years later they were extended to 360 feet, paid for by football receipts. Builder was Clinton Campbell and the construction was finished in the summer of 1938.
In 1947, the stands were extended to the north and south and a dormitory was built underneath at a cost of $67,526 for the housing of football players. Roy Place, again, was the architect.
In 1948, a kitchen and dining room were added at a cost of $26, 780. Seventeen years later, in 1965, air conditioning was emplaced at a cost of $44,759. Six years after that, seating was added in an upward expansion. Finical and Dombreksy were the architects. This upward expansion cost $5,163,033.
In 1982, the "East Dorm" was renamed Sierra Hall. Lew Place recalls the building of the original concrete stands. In those days, contractors mixed their concrete at the site and filled the forms. The days of separate concrete companies delivering the concrete to the construction site were yet to come.
"Archie Campbell set out his forms and was pouring from the bottom up," Lew Place says. "He and his crew worked night and day and it took them three days to pour without ever stopping with two cement mixers."
Mrs. Lew Place Nelson remembers brewing huge urns of coffee for the crew. "We lived down the street and I had coffee going all the time and would take it to them there on the job. The crew would mix the concrete on the ground, pour it into wheelbarrows and then go up ramps and dump it in."
At the higher levels, Lew Place said, "Archie had an elevator that went up to the top. They would place a wheelbarrow full of concrete in the elevator and they would pull it up to the top with an engine and a cable. One worker at the top would get off with the filled wheelbarrow and another would get on and bring his empty wheelbarrow down.
"One time, just as one worker started to put his feet on the elevator, something broke. It went crashing back to the ground. You couldn't get any worker close to that thing from then on."