Ole Miss is making big upgrades to the Manning Center, the football program’s operations facility.

David Johnson of Ole Miss Spirit shares that the athletic department has hired HOK-Sports out of Kansas City and plans to spend $250-$300 million on renovations, improvements and expansions. Ole Miss plans to spend $35-40 million on the Manning Center, per Johnson.

“One of the things we’ve been working on here, even back when Coach (Matt) Luke was here and before Coach (Lane) Kiffin, was a big renovation to our locker room. That’s going to be a big component of it,” Ole Miss athletic director Carter shared with OM Spirit. “Coach Kiffin…one of his main things when he got here…was we needed to improve our weight room facilities, so that will be a big component of it. Then really from there it’s just kind of a general overhaul and upgrading and enhancing of the Manning Center. Obviously, that’s a great building. We’ve had a lot of great folks who’ve stepped up and helped us build that building. We need new graphics. We need new technology. There are just some things there that we’ve got to upgrade. If you think about it, we did a lot over there, but it’s been six or seven years now. In athletics terms, that’s kind of like dog years. We haven’t done a lot in the last seven years, and these other schools are starting to do that, so we’ve got to do that, as well.

“Again, we’ve got a company looking at that right now. We’ve got architects on the ground working with the coaches and with our administrative team. We hope to launch the overall campaign toward the end of football season, but our hope is when we do that, that we also reveal the plans for the Manning Center and that we’re going ahead and getting started with construction after the first of the year.”

More from Carter on the facilities project can be read here.