It is coming along. http://www.soldierfield.net/ I keep looking at pictures to see how wide they can make the field for the Fire. Can they get it 70-75 yds. wide?
One side of seats and ones in one end zone will be movable seats so the field can be enlarged for soccer. I got this directly from ted phillips president of the bears.
Fire Field Awesome! Will it be a situation like the Revs had in their old stadium where the playing field got smaller after the NFL season started?
Looks ugly. I think it will look ugly later, too. It doesn't look very attractive driving past. The old style shell with the new metal stands rising far above. Just my opinion.
Re: Fire Field Actually that happens at Gillette Stadium right now. When football season starts, they use the bottom of the Patriots' endzone art as the endline. It's probably 105-108 yards. Before football, it's 115. If it makes you feel better, Pat fans have complained that the seats are too far from the field. Foxboro, as it was designed, couldn't accomodate more than 110x68. For USA94, the seats in the corners were removed and remained that way until I think 1998. During the WC, it could've been as much as 75, but I don't think FIFA was as strict about field size back then. That is fascinating about Soldier Field though. I noticed on the models on the website that, just eyeballing it, the field looked narrow.
Driving past Soldier Field makes me think of one thing....UGLY! Either a giant flying saucer landed on Soldier Field or the world's largest toilet is being creates. Did they drop the Sate of Illionois building atop the old field. What a mess.
the worst thing about the stadium is how low the angle of the seats are.. your too far from the field. the stadium seats should be sloped higher, but its old and for football.....
The Millennium Falcon landed on Soldier Field. I think the stadium will look a lot nicer on the inside than the old one and be a noticeable improvement, but it definitely will not be a $650 million improvement. There are plenty of nice NFL stadiums being built across the country for significantly smaller budgets, but because of the stupid preservation of the collonades, this restoration/rebuilding project is operating on such a bloated budget. Without that aspect of the deal, they probably could've completely torn down the old Soldier Field and replaced it with a perfectly nice, brand new $400 million stadium on the same site, restored all the parkland that they've done, improve parking at the site AND build the Fire a nice stadium in the $30-60 million range and still had $150-200 million left over. And they probably could've done that on a much shorter timeline. Keeping the collonades in place looks dumb and it increased costs and construction time (because they had to be careful in the demolition aspect of the project, not to knock them out).
The old Soldier Field had that problem, but the new Soldier Field looks much like the Revs' and Rapids' new homes.
Seats I heard from a Fire source that the seats will be pulled back for soccer UNTIL the Bears start using the stadium. Then, it's pulled in and stays that way. Sounds as if it affects length and width. Great - so we get a properly sized pitch until August, then, for the most important games, it's back to narrowsville. We need to keep working toward a SSS.