Lake Fong, Post-Gazette An aerial view of the area in Oakland where the University of Pittsburgh plans to build new athletic facilities as part of a $1 billion campus modernization project. The Petersen Events Center is in the upper right. Click photo for larger image.

Forget Seton Hall and Rutgers. Forget Villanova and Cincinnati, too.

The University of Pittsburgh has bigger aspirations, national aspirations.

Sure, it would be wonderful to be mentioned as the premier athletic department in the Big East Conference, but Pitt men's and women's track and field coach Alonzo Webb wants to aim higher.

Webb thinks Pitt's athletic department could become a player on the national scene, akin to a Florida, Texas, Southern California or Stanford.

"I want to compete with the schools in the Southeastern Conference and schools like Texas and all those guys, and I believe we can," Webb said. "It is just a matter of time."

And perhaps the most vital component in an attempt to reach that goal was unveiled earlier this month, when Pitt committed more than $1 billion to campus-wide modernization, renovation, construction and infrastructure upgrades over 12 years. While most of the money will go to upgrade existing academic facilities, nearly $22.9 million of the projected $34.3 million allocated to the athletic arm of the university will fund new construction.

Pitt athletic director Jeff Long confirmed the vast majority -- if not all -- of the money needed for the project will come from private donations.

The plan would have the greatest impact on what are commonly referred to as Olympic or non-revenue sports, those programs that have lower visibility than basketball or football.

Pitt plans to build a soccer complex, track/intramural complex, softball field, marching-band facility and baseball complex. The athletic department also plans to spend $11.4 million to renovate Fitzgerald Field House, Trees Hall and the Cost Sports Center and put a diving well into Trees Pool.

The soccer, baseball, track and softball facilities are in the first four-year phase of the plan.

The athletic department construction will take place at the former site of the dilapidated Allequippa Terrace public-housing

project, which was torn down in the mid 1990s. In 2000, the Oak Hill housing community opened on a portion of the site and, since then, the remaining land was at the vortex of a tug of war between Pitt, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, and developer Beacon/Corcoran Jennison. In March, the parties came to an agreement, clearing the way for Pitt to go forward with its plan to build the state-of-the-art athletic facility. While the deal has not been finalized, sources indicate the closing of the deal is imminent, and that will give Pitt the land it needs. Pitt officials refused the Post-Gazette's request to indicate exactly where the specific playing fields would be built on the acquired land.

But, this is new construction that could, as Webb alluded to, be the most pivotal cog in catapulting Pitt's athletic department to a seat at the table with the NCAA's heavy hitters.

That's what Petersen Events Center, opened in 2002, did for the Pitt men's and women's basketball programs. Since that facility opened on the former site of Pitt Stadium, the men's team has become an upper-echelon program, stringing together six consecutive NCAA tournament appearances and twice reaching the No. 2 ranking in Division I basketball.

The women's basketball team also has parlayed the new venue into an overwhelming upshot, going from a team that was 3-13 in conference play the year before the Petersen Events Center was built to a program that, this past season, reached the NCAA tournament for the first time in its history and played host to the first two rounds of the championship.

Using the basketball renaissance as an example, Pitt softball coach Michelle Phelan looks to benefit immeasurably from a new facility. Phelan's program currently plays at Trees Field, a facility not dilapidated or ramshackle by any stretch, but nothing that would be confused for, even remotely, a softball Mecca.

Phelan pointed to recently completed softball facilities at Louisville and St. John's and one set to open next season at Notre Dame as examples of venues that have helped intensify the scope of those respective programs. And she has, in her mind, an idea of what sort of facility could bolster Pitt's softball program.

"To me, the best thing would be to do it up right for about 500 fans," said Phelan, who is the only softball coach in Pitt's 10 years of competition. "A concession area, a grandstand, nothing too elaborate, but a very nice facility.

"We knew when they were able to [go forward with this project] that they were going to do it first class because that's the way everything has been done since I have been here. Every improvement has just been state of the art. We knew it would happen and we were hoping that it would happen sooner rather than later. ... We know that once we get our facilities, they are going to be pretty darn good."

More to the point for Webb's program will be the ability to host outdoor meets on-campus -- something Pitt currently cannot do -- and the avoidance of shuttling athletes off campus for practice once the new track complex is erected.

Pitt's track teams now juggle a practice schedule between Carnegie Mellon's track at Gesling Stadium, the Schenley Park Oval track and a less-than-ideal indoor track at the Fitzgerald Field House.

"You couldn't call it a schedule," Webb said of his practice itinerary. "It is sort of like helter-skelter. It is whenever we can get, wherever we can get."

Webb, who has been Pitt's coach since 2002, understands the lip service sometimes handed down from major-college athletic directors to their respective coaches.

"They say, 'Hey, we're going to be doing these things for you,' and they never get done and you know in your mind they're really not working on them," he said. "They're just telling you that to sort of just hold you off. But, I don't think any of the coaches here ever felt that way. ... They started doing some of the little things, and it was just a matter of time before they got to the big things."

These big things have opened the eyes of the coaches and student-athletes at Pitt, but also the eyes of athletes considering Pitt as the place where they will continue their athletic careers.

Such is the case with Burrell High School senior Cole Taylor, one of the top area high school baseball players. He will join coach Joe Jordano's Pitt baseball team next season as a freshman. He was lured, at least in part, by the understanding that during his career he will play at a new baseball diamond.

"They told me that the new baseball field is going to be all turf and have dirt basepaths," Taylor said. "From what they said, I think it will seat 8,000 people or so. To think about playing in a place like that is very important to a recruit. For me, I probably would have gone to Pitt anyway because I really like what coach Jordano is doing with the program and the direction it is going in. But, for some recruits, yeah, the new facility coming in could be the No. 1 reason they choose Pitt and not another school."

Webb understands that.

"The kids these days, they want to see nice shiny bells and whistles and stuff like that," Webb said. "I know what the Petersen Events Center did for basketball and being able to play at Heinz Field and the [practice facility] on the South Side for football. It has really impacted their programs in a positive way.

"I think it is going to do the same thing for the rest of the sports here, and there's no telling the heights we can reach as an athletic department."