(04-11-2024 12:48 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  Demolition at Ryan Field is nearly complete, with the final pieces of the existing structure set to come down by the beginning of May. Toward the end of this month, activities will shift from demolition to construction.





https://rebuildryanfield.com/constructio...-2024.html

Looks reminiscent of what the current NW administration did to their Football program last year. Hopefully the stadium rebuild goes as well as last season in football (and basketball!).

(04-29-2024 09:46 AM)indianasniff Wrote:  

(04-11-2024 09:13 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  Northwestern Univ says they will play most of their home games in a temporary stadium on their campus built on their soccer/lacrosse field.
Kind of like Hawaii but smaller (unless they can pull off some amazing engineering).
That's a shock!

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/20...struction/

https://nusports.com/facilities/lanny-an...acrosse)/5

Any renderings of how this is going to work? A horse shoe open to the lake would be fun.

I'm really curious how they will squeeze a temporary stadium to host BIG10 football games on maybe 3 acres facing a lake (a hard boundary). I hope they've got a great engineering department! Maybe they will erect stands on the field hockey field facing the soccer field, and take half the practice field for end zone seats? Bring in a truckfull of porta-pottys and squeeze in some food trucks? For a scoreboard maybe they could have kids put the numbers up by hand like at Wrigley Field? There will be no parking. Rich fans could maybe take their boat to the game and drop anchor like at Univ Washington?

In 2022 Northwestern averaged around 30,000 attendance for the season. This temporary stadium seems so preposterous that I wonder if it isn't just a negotiating ploy to squeeze a lower rent on other Chicago area stadiums.

(04-29-2024 12:24 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  

(04-29-2024 09:46 AM)indianasniff Wrote:  

(04-11-2024 09:13 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  Northwestern Univ says they will play most of their home games in a temporary stadium on their campus built on their soccer/lacrosse field.
Kind of like Hawaii but smaller (unless they can pull off some amazing engineering).
That's a shock!

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/20...struction/

https://nusports.com/facilities/lanny-an...acrosse)/5

Any renderings of how this is going to work? A horse shoe open to the lake would be fun.

I'm really curious how they will squeeze a temporary stadium to host BIG10 football games on maybe 3 acres facing a lake (a hard boundary). I hope they've got a great engineering department! Maybe they will erect stands on the field hockey field facing the soccer field, and take half the practice field for end zone seats? Bring in a truckfull of porta-pottys and squeeze in some food trucks? For a scoreboard maybe they could have kids put the numbers up by hand like at Wrigley Field? There will be no parking. Rich fans could maybe take their boat to the game and drop anchor like at Univ Washington?

In 2022 Northwestern averaged around 30,000 attendance for the season. This temporary stadium seems so preposterous that I wonder if it isn't just a negotiating ploy to squeeze a lower rent on other Chicago area stadiums.

FWIW, here are the conceptual plan and drawing for Hawaii's temporary on-campus stadium, along with a photo of the finished result (which is a bit less elaborate and shows the reverse angle from the drawing). The structure doesn't take up very much space yet seats 15,000, and most of the build was done in a single off-season. Not too pretty, but serviceable. The far end zone jumbotron was rescued from condemned Aloha Stadium, transported to campus and re-erected.

(04-29-2024 10:06 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(04-29-2024 12:24 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  I'm really curious how they will squeeze a temporary stadium to host BIG10 football games on maybe 3 acres facing a lake (a hard boundary). I hope they've got a great engineering department! Maybe they will erect stands on the field hockey field facing the soccer field, and take half the practice field for end zone seats? Bring in a truckfull of porta-pottys and squeeze in some food trucks? For a scoreboard maybe they could have kids put the numbers up by hand like at Wrigley Field? There will be no parking. Rich fans could maybe take their boat to the game and drop anchor like at Univ Washington?

In 2022 Northwestern averaged around 30,000 attendance for the season. This temporary stadium seems so preposterous that I wonder if it isn't just a negotiating ploy to squeeze a lower rent on other Chicago area stadiums.

FWIW, here are the conceptual plan and drawing for Hawaii's temporary on-campus stadium, along with a photo of the finished result (which is a bit less elaborate and shows the reverse angle from the drawing). The structure doesn't take up very much space yet seats 15,000, and most of the build was done in a single off-season. Not too pretty, but serviceable. The far end zone jumbotron was rescued from condemned Aloha Stadium, transported to campus and re-erected.

I'm really impressed by what Univ Hawaii achieved in such a short time. I wondered how they would pull it off, but they certainly did.

The challenge Northwestern has is that the east side of the soccer field is a lake. Could they put stands on pontoons? That would cool!
The north side has a building and a tiny parking lot. Maybe they could put a few stands in the parking lot.
I am really interested to see how they will put this off. The first game of the 2024 season is only 4 months away!

Maybe this would work for Northwestern!

(04-11-2024 09:13 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  Northwestern Univ says they will play most of their home games in a temporary stadium on their campus built on their soccer/lacrosse field.
Kind of like Hawaii but smaller (unless they can pull off some amazing engineering).
That's a shock!

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/20...struction/

https://nusports.com/facilities/lanny-an...acrosse)/5

The first article mentions a company called InProduction and credits them with the University of Hawaii temporary stadium, and the Chicago Nascar street race.

https://www.inproduction.com/

Their modular stands appear to be mainly high-gauge aluminum on stop of a steel structure with bolt on plastic seats. The stands are more assembled than built.

One of their projects was for West Florida football. West Florida plays in a minor league baseball facility 16 miles from campus. There was a conflict between football and baseball. So they built temporary stands at their on-campus practice field. It apparently was cost effective for a single game (they used the baseball stadium for the remainder of the season). The temporary stadium for West Florida seated 6500, but if it is modular, it should be expandable.

There is a temporary 34,000 seat cricket ground being assembled in Queens, NY; including stands used for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, with grass being grown in Florida (it would be interesting to know how that gets to NY).

The Nascar race in Chicago has promised quicker erection and tear-down for this year's race compared to the initial event in 2023. The Nascar race is in early July, so it is possible that they can disassemble the Nascar stands truck the parts to Evanston and reassemble them by football season.

They can be doing site prep at Northwestern which might just involve clearing the site and pouring a concrete pad. Maybe they can tear down the seats to avoid the winter along the lake.

I'm guessing they will have a much larger end-zone seating than is typical. Maybe they can build a more vertical structure on the east side for a press box and suites.

(04-11-2024 09:13 PM)Elliot Lewis Wrote:  Northwestern Univ says they will play most of their home games in a temporary stadium on their campus built on their soccer/lacrosse field.
Kind of like Hawaii but smaller (unless they can pull off some amazing engineering).
That's a shock!

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/20...struction/

https://nusports.com/facilities/lanny-an...acrosse)/5

Oh man, how did I miss this?

Karma.

Jimrtex:
"they built temporary stands at their on-campus practice field. It apparently was cost effective for a single game (they used the baseball stadium for the remainder of the season). The temporary stadium for West Florida seated 6500"

Wow! That's impressive engineering. Maybe Northwestern can pull it off by the end of August.

Is there anyone close to Evanston IL who can "spy" for us and take some pictures of the progress?
Frank the Tank, maybe?

They haven’t started yet. It’ll be 15k bleachers.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02...ck-routes/

If you drive down Central St in Evanston, you’ll see the ruins of Dyche Stadium.

NU did say Michigan/Ohio St games would be at different venues.

(05-02-2024 05:25 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  They haven’t started yet. It’ll be 15k bleachers.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02...ck-routes/

If you drive down Central St in Evanston, you’ll see the ruins of Dyche Stadium.

NU did say Michigan/Ohio St games would be at different venues.

Nascar is renting the seating for the Chicago Nascar street race, so that must mean that InProduction can move them to a different site.

Nascar does own the concrete barriers topped by fencing to keep cars and debris from entering the seating. Maybe no vendor wants the liability.

The Northwestern guy told the Evanston city council that they were "glorified bleachers". I suspect that the InProduction people wanted to throttle him. Cooler heads explained that Northwestern was the customer.

The InterMiami temporary stadium in Fort Lauderdale is billed as being modular. It appears that the club entered into contract with the city in July 2019 and had the stadium ready by March 2020. They have added around 5000 seats to accommodate Lionel Messi. Meanwhile the permanent stadium in Miami won't be ready until 2025, in part due to delays in securing a site.

Work ongoing for Canes new stadium. Timeline remains fluid

(05-03-2024 09:11 AM)jimrtex Wrote:  The Northwestern guy told the Evanston city council that they were "glorified bleachers". I suspect that the InProduction people wanted to throttle him

Like the hustlers in North Florida who put lipstick on a house trailer by selling it as a "prefabricated home"

(05-02-2024 05:25 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  They haven’t started yet. It’ll be 15k bleachers.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02...ck-routes/

If you drive down Central St in Evanston, you’ll see the ruins of Dyche Stadium.

NU did say Michigan/Ohio St games would be at different venues.

I am guessing the 2024 Wisc and ILL games will also be at different venues. Possibly Soldier Field. The Ohio St game will probably be at Wrigley Field.

The Indiana game might be interesting if it's at the temporary stadium or a different venue. If it's on the campus, it could be a good candidate for homecoming.

(05-02-2024 05:25 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  They haven’t started yet. It’ll be 15k bleachers.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02...ck-routes/

If you drive down Central St in Evanston, you’ll see the ruins of Dyche Stadium.

NU did say Michigan/Ohio St games would be at different venues.

Looking at the Martin Stadium site, I think jimrtex is right. To get 15K seats in there it'll be necessary to put a lot of them in an end zone. More specifically, a pretty sizable bleacher structure will probably have to be built in the south end zone, on top of Hutcheson Field. As an example here's the oversized north end zone bleacher Hawaii put in its temporary stadium:



Based on Figora's comments, the north end zone and east sideline bleachers will be much smaller, to avoid impinging on the existing parking lot and trees.

I imagine the VIP boxes mentioned by Fiora will go on the west side, mounted above the existing Martin Stadium bleachers with the supporting framework set on Lakeside Field. The connection from the bleachers will have to wrap around the existing light poles, similar to what Hawaii did on its west sideline:





It will be interesting to look at the renderings when they become available.

(05-03-2024 01:23 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(05-02-2024 05:25 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  They haven’t started yet. It’ll be 15k bleachers.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2024/05/02...ck-routes/

If you drive down Central St in Evanston, you’ll see the ruins of Dyche Stadium.

NU did say Michigan/Ohio St games would be at different venues.

Looking at the Martin Stadium site, I think jimrtex is right. To get 15K seats in there it'll be necessary to put a lot of them in an end zone. More specifically, a pretty sizable bleacher structure will probably have to be built in the south end zone, on top of Hutcheson Field. As an example here's the oversized north end zone bleacher Hawaii put in its temporary stadium:



Based on Figora's comments, the north end zone and east sideline bleachers will be much smaller, to avoid impinging on the existing parking lot and trees.

I imagine the VIP boxes mentioned by Fiora will go on the west side, mounted above the existing Martin Stadium bleachers with the supporting framework set on Lakeside Field. The connection from the bleachers will have to wrap around the existing light poles, similar to what Hawaii did on its west sideline:





It will be interesting to look at the renderings when they become available.

It turns out that the inspiration was Pat Fitzgerald, but it sounds like Northwestern can't really admit that. Mumble, mumble, it was something like that, but it was totally impractical and would have taken out the field hockey facility which has a special turf, it was mumble, mumble, the leadership of David Braun who brought the project to fruition. Fitzgerald who?

I was going to put the largest structure to the west, but that would be on top of the field hockey field (some of the temporary grandstands for the Las Vegas Grand Prix appear to be about 50 rows).

But they should be able to build an extension of the existing stands, and perhaps above the field hockey seating.

On the east (lake) side they might build vertically. Hospitality suites for the road races appear to be three levels high, so they could put suites above a fairly small bleacher area.

It is kind of interesting that schematics have not been released yet.