Watching a game at Holt Arena in coming years may be more comfortable.

The State Board of Education approved a motion during its Thursday meeting in Idaho Falls allowing Idaho State University to remove the seats inside the multi-use domed arena and install new seats. The approval allows ISU to move forward with fundraising efforts and get a cost estimate from the Idaho Division of Public Works.

Once the division assesses the proposed project, ISU can begin a bidding process to find a company to carry out the work. ISU Director of Athletics Jeff Tingey said he estimates the total cost for the project to be between $2 million and $2.5 million, all of which will be acquired through fundraising.

Tingey said the major goal of the project, which is still in its early stages, is to install uniformly colored seats — gutting Holt Arena’s multi-colored, 12,000-seat layout. Most of the seats have been in place since the building opened in 1970 and are plastic with no padding, arm rests or cup holders. Tingey said most of the specifics of the new seats are still being worked out.

He said he expects the project to reduce Holt Arena’s capacity because the new seats will likely have arm rests, which will take up more space than the current seats.

But given ISU’s recent attendance figures, fewer seats may lead to a fuller-feeling game-day environment.

ISU’s two teams that call Holt Arena home — football and men’s basketball — have struggled to maintain successful win-loss records and fill the arena’s seats in recent years. The football team’s largest average home attendance in the last five seasons was 7,268 (60.1 percent capacity) in 2015, and the men’s basketball team’s largest average home crowd over the same span was 1,836 — 23 percent capacity for Holt’s 8,000-seat basketball configuration — in 2015-16. The averages have dipped as low as 5,367 (44.7 percent capacity) for football in 2013 and 1,436 (17.9 percent capacity) for basketball in 2016-17.

Tingey said he’d like to use a chunk of the new seats to display “some type of iconic branding,” like the Bengals’ interwoven “IS” logo. Those seats would be a different color than the majority, such as silver seats forming a logo in a sea of black seats.

Holt Arena’s current seating chart includes columns of brown, yellow, green, orange and blue seats.

If the necessary funds are raised, Tingey said construction will likely not begin until next summer, with a goal of having the new seats ready for the 2019 football season. The new seats would follow a recent series of upgrades to Holt Arena — the oldest active enclosed stadium in the United States — including a more efficient LED lighting system, an end-zone video scoreboard, TV monitors in hallways and remodeled restrooms.