Construction of St. Louis CITY SC’s stadium is on schedule and has moved on from the early phases and onto the structural phase. The club’s construction partners (Mortenson, Alberici, and L. Keeley) first broke ground only 10 months ago, achieved the major milestone of placing the first steel beam this past Monday, and are now 60 percent complete with the foundation work.
The new Major League Soccer stadium is slated to be completed in time for the team’s opening season in 2023 (after being pushed back one year because of the COVID-19 pandemic).
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There are about 170 workers on the site working eight to 10 hours five days a week. The crew has experienced weather delays and COVID-19 protocols have offered new challenges in cold weather, such as protective glasses fogging up. The team even had to work around a natural spring they discovered. “There is about 86 gallons a minute, possibly flowing,” says Denver Callahan, the project’s senior superintendent. “It’s not uncommon. If you start looking at survey maps of St. Louis, you’ll actually see them all through here. We’re actually lucky we didn’t find any of the caverns that exist in this part of the city.”
Callahan, who’s worked on other big projects such as the Minnesota Vikings’ U.S. Bank Stadium, in Minneapolis, says this stadium is deeper than other MLS stadiums and that some of its innovative features might be noted for future facilities to follow.
“I look forward to the fact that this is an expansion team,” Callahan says of working on a historic development and how it will progress the area. “There’s an excitement that that brings, not only with the fan base but with the community.”
Here are five other facts to know about where St. Louis CITY SC will score goals:
- The stadium will have 22,500 seats.
- The heaviest steel beam weighs 76,000 pounds, which is equal to 40 Budweiser Clydesdales.
- A man-made lake, once known as Chouteau’s Pond, previously existed on-site in the 1800s.
- There are 17,000 linear feet of drilled piers, which is equal to 27 Gateway Arches stacked on top of each other.
- There will be 13,900 container yards of structural concrete required to complete the stadium, which is equal to 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Want to follow along with the stadium’s progress? Check out this website.
