Construction of a new Louisville City FC stadium is about halfway complete, putting the facility on schedule for a spring 2020 opening.
Work has been underway on the upcoming stadium that will open for Division II USL Championship’s Louisville City FC in 2020. The stadium will replace Louisville Slugger Field as the venue for Louisville City FC home matches, giving the club a modern soccer-specific stadium after it spent years playing at a facility primarily designed for Minor League Baseball.
The project was recently stated by a club official to be roughly 50% complete. Structural steel installation is finished, with the next major task to be the preparation and installation of the facility’s natural Bermuda grass playing surface. More from the Courier-Journal:
With the structural steel installation complete, the stadium is “about 50 percent” done and still on course to be complete by Spring 2020, according to Howie Lindsey, director of public relations for LouCity.
Jason Larkin, project manager for contractor Messer Construction, says the construction teams have been working from “dawn to dusk most days except Sundays” to complete the project. The crews used nearly 3 million pounds of steel to build the initial structure, forming and solidifying the stadium’s height and shape.
The next step in the process will be preparing and installing the playing surface in the arena. The natural Bermuda grass was purchased last fall and is currently growing on a sod farm in Indiana. It will be installed prior to winter this year so that it will be ready for spring.
“The holy grail in soccer is having something called a soccer specific stadium,” Lindsey said during the latest stadium tour. “It’s built for soccer, by soccer fans, specifically for that purpose. We loved our time at Slugger Field, and we continue to enjoy working with the crew at Slugger. Our history is built there, so it will be a sad day when we have to say goodbye to Slugger Field, but moving to a soccer-specific stadium, it’s perfect.”
The new stadium is being billed as the anchor of a larger redevelopment initiative in the city’s Butchertown neighborhood. Louisville City FC is on track arrive at the facility next spring after having competed at Louisville Slugger Field since 2015.
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