Minnesota United’s future home, Allianz Field in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, has been rising from the ground since November, and this week marked its progression past 50 percent complete via Greg Huber, Allianz Field project manager of Mortenson Construction.
During a tour of the stadium construction site for media on Thursday afternoon, both Huber and Dr. Bill McGuire, managing director and owner of Minnesota United, spoke about the stadium’s progress to this point.
“Despite a really, really tough winter and a very brutal spring, we’re on schedule and we’re also on budget,” Huber said. The stadium’s steel canopy is more than halfway complete and is now clearly visible from all angles outside the stadium, including easily from I-94.
Via Huber, many of the most visually striking features of the stadium, however, are scheduled to be installed in the months of May and June, including:
- The video board, which is scheduled to be delivered in mid-May and will be installed on the south side of the stadium
- The stadium seats, which are scheduled to be delivered in mid-June
- The supporters’ section safe standing areas, which are partially complete already
- The PTFE rain screen, the first panel of which is scheduled to be installed in mid-May, along with the lights that will illuminate it
The combination of rain screen, steel canopy and lights, which is detailed further here, will be the element that makes the stadium look the most like its depictions from the outside. It’s already easy to see the outline of what it will be, and the actual canopy going up will really lock those details in.
“I think like all of us, it’s pretty amazing to see how much has been accomplished in so little time,” McGuire said.
“The aesthetic is just tremendous, and when you think about how that works together with the fan experience, which you’re starting to now get a feel of because you can see how intimate all of the people that are coming to this experience are with the players. The combination of architecture, aesthetic, and functionality around a great game experience is pretty overwhelming.”
We were able to walk through part of the concourse and down onto field level, which is almost exactly the level that the final grass field will be.
The stadium’s concourse is at outside ground level, which puts the field significantly lower.
The installation of the canopy, video board and speaker systems — all scheduled to begin within May — will also give a better idea of what the stadium will sound like, which will be a remarkably different experience than the wide-open field of TCF Bank Stadium.
The pictures above show how far the construction has already come, and the official mark of halfway done and on schedule is a major landmark.
The stadium is right at the intersection of Snelling Avenue and I-94 in Saint Paul, and is clearly visible from outside the construction site as well. With the elements mentioned on the way in May, I expect the stadium to look significantly closer to reality the next time media gets a chance to visit.
