Rapids Stadium Update

I might be open in time for the start of the season but sod placement is hardly the last step. The sod was installed in Toyota park in November of December. Full 7 or 8 months before the stadium opened.

 

Holy crap! They're laying the sod already?!? wow, whoever you guys got working out there in Colorado send them to Harrison when you're done please.

 

I'm sure that the Colorado organization has to be happy about that. The long road-trips at the beginning of the season has been a killer to everyone, including the fans. Being able to start in their new digs from day one is a much better situation for the entire league and specifically for the Rapids. Wonderful news.

 

Things look good for an on-time opening. Denver gets as many days of sun as does Southern California. It just gets nasty when a blizzard rolls in and promptly rolls out.

... or so I'm told. I've never been.

 

Looks like I'll be making my first trip to Denver next year ........... unless DC is unfortunate enough to play there during midweek.

 

After 8 non-Saturday games this year we better damn well not have any miod-week games next year in our own stadium...

 

I feel ya. The Revs have had five saturday home games this year and two were afternoon games.

The problem was our schedule, for games both home and away, kept getting moved around due to concerts or pats games.

Better get to midweek games with 13 teams unless they start the season over a month early. There's also that possible tournament with mexican teams and those friendlies that SUM seems to be making a killing on.

 

Real mild winter - and real dry spring - allowed them to make some crazy progress. I think they may be ahead of schedule - but not positive.

 

This year, our enemy was Lacrosse. Pat Bowlen owns the new MLL (or NLL, or MILL, or whatever they call it) team and gave them all the Saturdays. We have Dallas, Salt Lake, LA...all decent games...on Wednesday.

 

The sod is down in Wembley, and that may not be ready for the FA Cup Final in May!

 

You pretty much have to get the turf started before the bulding if you're going to have any hope of having a playable surface in eight months. This ain't your basic suburban red fescue tree lawn.

When they built Crew stadium, the Scotts people (their HQ used to be up the road in Marysville) came in and laid down the pitch in an otherwise empty field. There was literally nothing else there. (There are some cool pictures someplace)

They then constructed the stadium around it. There was no fallback location, since the field at Ohio Stadium was also completely dug up because they were lowering it fifteen feet as part of the renovations to add 12,000 seats.

Ideally, I'm told, field managers would like 18 months at a minimum, but I don't think anyone in MLS has ever had that luxury.

 

I moved to Colorado the first week of July and it's rained at my house every afternoon except two. Of course, I'm at 9,100', and that has something to do with it. Nice mornings though.

 

Yeah it's a lot dryer in Denver - but rain has picked up this late Summer for sure.

 

Don't hold your breath.

 

Isn't the MLL team supposed to follow the Rapids out to Commerce City?

 

Even if they do, I would hope that the Rapids would have control of the schedule since it is their stadium.

 

Up in the air right now since the guy who "owns" Invesco owns the MLL team IIRC. There was some talk about getting them though.

 

I doubt it, I live in the Southern California desert and my hometown averages 351.4 days of sunshine a year.

 

The Mammoth were supposed to use the facility to grow the game on the youth sie of things. They are the indoor team not the outdoor. Which means that they won't be playing there.

 

We get about 69% of the sunlight available to us throughout the year. By contrast LA gets 73% while San Diego gets 68%. Chicago gets 54% and Columbus gets 50%.

 

It's the Outlaws of MLL that are likely to play there.

 

That's funny.