ENS 700 Field
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San Diego Trolley
Green Lineat SDSU Transit Center
SDSU Rugby Pitch | |
  ENS 700 Field Location in Southern San Diego  ENS 700 Field Location in California  ENS 700 Field Location in the United States | |
| Address | Campanile Mall |
|---|---|
| Location | San Diego, California |
| Coordinates | 32°46′25″N 117°04′22″W / 32.773571°N 117.072797°W |
| Public transit | San Diego Trolley Green Line at SDSU Transit Center |
| Owner | San Diego State University |
| Operator | San Diego State University Associated Students of SDSU |
| Field size | 135 by 60 yards (123 m × 55 m) |
| Acreage | 3 acres (1.2 ha) |
| Surface | Artificial turf |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | 1 May 2019[1] |
| Opened | 3 October 2019[2] |
| Construction cost | $5 million[3] |
| Architect | Ferguson Pape Baldwin Architects [4] |
| Builder | KTUA [5] |
| General contractor | Swinerton[6] |
| Tenants | |
| San Diego State Aztecs (USA Rugby) (2019–present) | |
| Website | |
| arc | |
ENS 700 Field is a multipurpose athletic and recreation field in San Diego, California, located on the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU). Opened in 2019, it is the home of the San Diego State Aztecs Rugby Club teams. The men's team competes in Division 1-A in the California Conference; the women's team competes in Division II in the Pacific Desert Conference.
The site has always been a recreation field dating back to when San Diego State College first moved onto Montezuma Mesa at the beginning of the 1930s. In addition to being a recreation field, it was also initially the location of the college's baseball field (with home plate in the south-west corner). With the construction of the Music and Dance Department building on the north-west corner of the site, the baseball field was moved to the current site of Tony Gwynn Stadium, the baseball diamond was converted to softball and a row of tennis courts were constructed along the western edge of the site separating it from what was then Aztec Bowl and is now Viejas Arena. The tennis courts have since been demolished.
With continual upgrades, expansion and building projects on campus since the early 1930s, what was initially a field on the edge of campus had, over the intervening 90 years, become an eye-sore adjacent to the main entrance and en route to two of the most popular venues at the university, the Open Air Theatre and Viejas Arena. Additionally, close to a century of development in the College Area means that open space is now at a premium and there are no longer many areas where sport and recreation can take place; much of the available field space on campus is reserved for use by the athletic teams. It was proposed that the field be renovated to provide the student body with a suitable space for activity classes, recreation and sport-club use, as well as to improve the general appearance of the main pedestrian thoroughfare into the campus core.
The student body was polled in a referendum in the spring semester of 2018 and they approved a large-scale expansion and renovation of the Aztec Recreation Center (ARC) and existing recreational field space on campus.[7] ENS 700 Field improvements were then approved by Associated Students on November 28, 2018[8] before the plans were reviewed by the Recreation and Wellness Commission in the spring of 2019 and approved.[9] The works were conducted during the summer of 2019[10] finishing just in time for the fall semester that same year.[11]
The project was awarded the American Public Works Association's Project of the Year for 2020.[12]
