Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Rams Huddle › Rams Inglewood stadium delayed 1 year. New ETA 2020 (el nino)
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May 18, 2017 at 3:35 pm #69002
joemadParticipantthat’s cool with me, 1 more year of affordable tix prices at LA Memorial Coliseum
URL = http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/05/18/71972/rams-chargers-stadium-opening-delayed-to-2020/
Blame it on the rain. The new shared stadium of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers will be delayed a year because of the torrential downpours last winter.
The $2.5 billion, 70,000-seat stadium was scheduled to open in 2019 along with a 300-acre entertainment district on the site of the former Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood. Unfortunately, the relentlessly wet weather forced major construction delays while digging the stadium bowl between January and March, according to a statement from the Rams posted online Thursday.
The stadium is now expected to open for the 2020 season.
“This new target gives us flexibility to accommodate any additional delays that may arise while still delivering an unparalleled experience upon opening,” the team wrote.
May 18, 2017 at 4:32 pm #69005
AgamemnonModeratorPoor, poor San Diego. They have no home.
AgamemnonMay 18, 2017 at 5:09 pm #69008
ZooeyParticipantPoor, poor San Diego. They have no home.
I think they should move back to San Diego after a year. Now that the Raiders are fully committed to Las Vegas, that would be the smart thing to do.
(at least from my pov because I hate the idea of the LA Chargers)
May 18, 2017 at 10:57 pm #69014znModeratorDemoff, Koger Talk Updated Timeline of L.A. Stadium
By Myles Simmons
While this winter’s record-setting rainfall may have benefited the Southern California region, it has led to a delay in the opening of the Los Angeles Stadium and Entertainment District at Hollywood Park. The project is now slated to be complete in mid-2020, with the Rams playing their first season there that year.
“Obviously it’s a disappointment when you’ve been working on something every day,” Rams Chief Operating Officer Kevin Demoff said on a conference call Thursday afternoon. “But our organization has always taken the long-term approach on the Los Angeles project. And this is important to get right.”
Demoff mentioned the vision of Rams Owner and Chairman E. Stanley Kroenke as the main reason to push back the opening date. According to Demoff, that vision has three main factors — that the project is world class, of the highest quality, and a game changer for the way stadiums and sports districts interact.
“What would be a bigger disappointment than pushing back a year is failing to deliver on that vision,” Demoff said. “Stan’s vision is unique and I think it’s an unbelievable responsibility for all of us who work on this project to make sure we deliver that for him, for fans, for Angelenos, for the NFL, and for the world when you talk about an event, potentially, like the 2024 Olympics. It’s much more important to get it right than to make sure you hit a certain date.”
To that end, Legends project development S.V.P. and managing director Dale Koger explained on the call the heavy rains Los Angeles faced the first few months of the year delayed the project enough so that it might not be complete by the 2019 NFL season.
This created a significant challenge, as it came right in the process of digging the 90-foot deep hole for the stadium’s playing field.
“As you’re digging this hole, and you’re 70 feet in the ground on the way to 90, when it rains there’s literally nowhere for the rain to go,” Koger said. “So if it rains on a Monday and Tuesday, you really end up missing Monday, Tuesday, probably Wednesday, probably Thursday. And there was a time — at the peak of it — that we had 12 to 15 feet of water in the hole.”
Koger said the research the development team had done “indicated that we should anticipate no more than about 30 rain days in the entire 36 months or so of construction. And we encountered almost double that in two months.”
In some ways, the issue was compounded because the stadium will host two clubs and as such will be used for at least 20 weeks in the NFL season.
“When you consider the fact that it’s a two-team facility, it’s not like the Rams could petition the league and say, ‘Let’s play our first few weeks away from home while we make up the schedule,’” Koger said.
And so instead, the stadium is slated to open with a string of events that would lead up to the 2020 preseason. Demoff said the logical timetable for opening is around early summer with something like a soccer exhibition or concert. And those events typically start in May.
“What this allows is the first time we host an event that people will be able to walk onto a sports and entertainment district that is unparalleled in the world and exceeds, hopefully, everybody’s standards for what they expect from and entertainment and sports district,” Demoff said. “We’re targeting May, June to bring events in ahead of the schedule, ahead of the preseason to really take advantage of that summer event series. And I think that’s when you’ll see the building come to life.”
“One of the benefits of the 2020 schedule is we now have a more conventional schedule for an NFL stadium that could, in fact, accommodate some unforeseen situations,” Koger said.
But it’s the rain and only the rain that impacted this new timeline. As Demoff said on Thursday, the stadium designers worked with the Federal Aviation Administration on how deep into the ground the field would be set, eliminating any issues there. And Demoff said frankly, “Economics were not a factor in this decision, whatsoever.
“This decision was based on delivering a world-class stadium at the highest quality possible,” he continued. “And that was the only basis of this decision.”
Since breaking ground in November, there has been plenty of ongoing work at the site. Koger said in spite of the rain, the mass excavation of up to 6,000,000 cubic yards of dirt for the stadium itself is complete. Koger added the foundation to support the project’s roof is 97 percent complete, and the foundation to support the stadium bowl is 95 percent complete.
“There are hundreds of workers on the site each day,” Demoff said. “The jobs that we’ve created on the construction project will impact Inglewood and will provide them revenue through this period as well.”
There are, of course, some consequences to moving the timeline. Demoff said personal seat licenses are still slated to begin going on sale in the fall in conjunction with the Chargers — nothing changes on that front. But the project will now require a waiver from the NFL to host Super Bowl LV. League rules currently stipulate a that a stadium cannot host a Super Bowl in its inaugural season.
Demoff said the likelihood of receiving a waiver is a better question for the league. But with two teams sharing the stadium, the Inglewood project does have some advantages.
“I think the reason for the two-year process is it gives the NFL the chance to go through 20 games to perfect how they want to run a Super Bowl,” Demoff said. “We have the unique advantage that we will have 20 NFL games in our building in 2020 — the same amount as a normal team would have over two years. We’ll have events in the summer. We will have the requisite number of events.
“But, obviously, this is the NFL’s decision. It’s a showcase game and they will want to make sure that it’s a great building for the Super Bowl. And we want to make sure that’s a great building for the Super Bowl,” Demoff continued. “And that’s a conversation we need to have over the next few years.”
Moving the timeline back also means the Rams will play in the Coliseum for an extra year. That stadium is already undergoing a renovation process — with new scoreboards in place this season — scheduled to be complete in 2019.
But NFL rules also currently stipulate that a team in a temporary stadium must play in the NFL’s international series. Demoff said there was always a chance the Rams could play an international game in 2019 or 2020 anyway, given that they’re scheduled to host a Super Bowl.
And finally — uniforms. Demoff said the Rams have already begun the two-year process of rebranding with the NFL and Nike. That means the club will have the choice of either changing their uniforms for the 2019 season or in 2020 to coincide with the opening of the stadium.
“That’s a decision we’ll make in the coming months as we look at uniforms,” Demoff said.
May 18, 2017 at 11:39 pm #69015znModeratorBonsignore: Stadium delay for Chargers, Rams not ideal, but also not a big deal
VINCENT BONSIGNORE
link: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/18/79352/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Apparently it does rain in Southern California.
And the record-breaking rainfall that besieged Los Angeles from November to February means the Rams and Chargers will have to wait at least one more year before they can mutually christen the $2.6 billion stadium in Inglewood they’ll eventually call home.
In the whole scheme of things, it’s more of a frustrating annoyance rather than fist-clenching letdown.
Yes, the two teams will take financial hits having to play one more year at their temporary digs rather than their luxurious new home. Which means revenue streams they were counting on tapping into won’t be available, even while they begin payments on the $500 million relocation fees they owe to fellow owners.
And certainly Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who is footing the bill for the stadium, will incur additional costs with the timeline getting pushed back a year. But as one of the most successful and wealthiest land developers in the world, that’s pretty much a daily risk for Kroenke.As for Los Angeles, there is a chance we will will miss out on the 2021 Super Bowl the NFL promised us last May. By rule, a new stadium has to be up and running at least two seasons to be eligible to host a Super Bowl, and the new timeline obviously eliminates that possibility.
The Rams are expected to ask for a waiver on the rule, and logic suggests owners will grant it provided everything goes smoothly from here on out.
But there’s also a chance they won’t.
Either way, you can expect Los Angeles to be a mainstay in the Super Bowl rotation. If it’s not 2021, you can bet 2022 will be in play.
In other words, the delay is a temporary irritation when weighed against the bigger objective.
“And that’s making sure we do this right,” Rams vice president Kevin Demoff said. “The objective is to deliver a world-class venue. Not reach a timeline if it means trying to rush things.”
The world-class venue is what the Rams pledged two years ago upon setting their sights on returning home after spending the previous 21 years in St. Louis. And a world-class venue we will still get. Just a little later than expected.
It’s a promise the Rams didn’t just make to Los Angeles, but also their NFL colleagues eager to get back to L.A. after the two-decade lapse. Kroenke sold fellow owners on the multi-purpose mega-development he envisioned across 300 acres in Inglewood – an NFL Disneyland, if you will – and that vision helped secure the necessary votes for relocation.
At the time, the Rams were involved in a three-team race to Los Angeles with their Inglewood stadium pitted against the joint stadium bid by the Chargers and Oakland Raiders in nearby Carson. Kroenke’s grand dream, and his financial wherewithal to make it happen, were the deciding factors in the Rams winning the day. As everyone congratulated each other on that fateful night in Houston – with Chargers owner Dean Spanos contemplating and ultimately pulling the trigger on his option to join the Rams in L.A. – the grand opening was slated for the 2019 season.
It’s California, everyone agreed. You can build year-round. No worries.
But who could have figured Mother Nature unleashing the kind of rain it did between the tail end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017?
Developers actually wrote 30 days of rain delays into the original 2019 timeline. And even that number seemed high to locals accustomed to mostly year-round sunshine.
So imagine everyone’s surprise when the first few months of construction were marred by nearly 60 days of weather delays.
The rain was great for the environment, but not so good when you’re trying to build a football stadium that, in order to avoid radar issues with airplanes flying into nearby LAX, needed to be built into a 90-foot hole dug into the earth.
“You have to go all the way down before you can come up,” said Dale Koger the Legends Project Development vice president overseeing the Inglewood project.
And while construction began last November with more than 100 workers digging the required hole and moving more than six million cubic yards of dirt across the construction site, the ensuing rain halted any other work and resulted in nearly two full months of delays.
Not to mention routinely transformed the hole they were digging into Lake Michigan West. That water, incidentally, had to be dealt with. And that took time.
Theoretically, the Rams and their partners could have forged ahead trying to reach the 2019 target date. And maybe even met it.
Instead, they opted for prudence over pride.
The delay not only eliminates any risk resulting in ramping up the pace to meet the original deadline, it also creates built-in accommodations for any potential future delays.
By deciding to apply the brakes now, they’ve set a realistic finish line they should easily cross rather than sprinting to a target they might ultimately fall short of.
“The worst thing you can do is get a year and a half in and then say, ‘we can’t get there’ and then tell people it’s because we lost three months to rain in 2017,” Demoff said. “Their response would have been: ‘Why didn’t you just announce the delay then?’”
That means the Rams spending one extra year at the Coliseum – a potential they accounted for by adding a 2019 option year to their original agreement with the Coliseum – and the Chargers playing one more year at StubHub Center in Carson.
Not ideal, obviously.
But much better than getting into 2018 and then taking a big, worrisome gulp knowing you might not be finished in time for kick off the following fall.
There’s some potential upside, too.
If you’re the Chargers, you get one more year acclimating and marketing yourself in Los Angeles – while playing in a 30,000-seat venue – before making the move to the much larger stadium in Inglewood.
That means one more year to entice local fans onto your bandwagon and season-ticket customer list for the new stadium.
“Our focus is always on the fan experience,” said A.G. Spanos, the Chargers’ president of business operations. “Our future home will be the best stadium in the NFL and deliver a transformational experience for Chargers fans. If getting it right means pushing back the completion date, then I think the extra year is well worth it.
“Construction is our family business, so we understand the challenges that come with a project of this magnitude. At StubHub Center we are creating an unparalleled environment for watching NFL football, and considering that no other venue in the league brings you closer to the action, we think Chargers fans will enjoy our three years in Carson.”
As for the Rams, if new coach Sean McVay and young quarterback Jared Goff use the longer runway to soar into the new stadium in 2020, will Rams fans really care if take off was delayed by a year?
Is it ideal? No. But in the grand scheme of things, a minor bump in the road.
May 20, 2017 at 11:33 am #69091
JackPMillerParticipantI thought it never rains in Southern California. That’s what they tell me.
May 26, 2017 at 11:08 am #69338znModeratorNFL miffed about L.A. stadium delay, some owners not buying El Nino story
Owners in cold-weather cities are skeptical that heavy rains could cause a two-month delayJason La Canfora
There was plenty of chatter at the recently completed NFL owners meetings in Chicago, as expected, about the announcement from late last week that the Rams’ and Chargers’ new stadium in Inglewood, California, would be delayed by a year and unable to open for the 2019 season, as expected. Sources told me the NFL was a bit miffed about this, especially given how much work was done behind the scenes to help get these franchises to Los Angeles and then bestowing them with a Super Bowl on top of that.
The decision not to waive the statute that a stadium must be operational for at least two years before it can host a Super Bowl was seen as a no-brainer — especially with Inglewood already well behind schedule — and there was abundant support for moving back the Super Bowl awarded to Los Angeles until after the 2021 season .
The Rams informed the league and the other owners at the meeting that they are currently seven-and-a-half weeks behind schedule on the stadium and blamed the unusually rainy weather in Southern California for the delays. That continues to be met with skepticism by others in the NFL, especially those cold-weather teams who have already constructed stadiums on time in the past decade or two.
“It has to be something else,” one NFL exec said. “You’re behind eight weeks because of rain and there is no way you can make that up over the next two-plus years? You don’t already have some of those contingencies built in? El Niño? That’s the story they’re sticking with, but we aren’t buying it. I think it was probably always am ambitious date from the start and one they probably couldn’t hit, but I could see why they would initially want that target out there.”
Some other clubs are wondering if the Chargers will really play three full seasons in StubHub Center in Carson, given that it currently seats just 27,000 people, and are surmising that in 2019 both the Chargers and Rams will be in the Los Angeles Coliseum as they try to get their fan bases ready for the launch of the new facility in 2020.May 26, 2017 at 11:10 am #69339znModeratormoved by zn
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