What does the L.A. Rams and Chargers stadium look like?

link: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/08/07/what-does-the-la-rams-and-chargers-stadium-look-like-playa-vista-simulation-opens-tuesday/

What does the L.A. Rams and Chargers stadium look like? Playa Vista simulation opens Tuesday

Every time Chris Hibbs flies into LAX he’ll peek out his window a minute or two before landing to the 300 acres in Inglewood sitting across the street from the Forum.

Invariably, a bit of a jolt will overcome him.

It represents the daily progress being made on the $2.6 billion sports and entertainment district Rams owner Stan Kroenke is building on the site, the anchor being the stadium the Rams and Chargers will share beginning in 2020.

But Hibbs also thinks about the role he is playing in marketing the project to a region as unique as Los Angeles, the work that still remains and what the stadium and entertainment district will ultimately look like when it’s completed.

“It’s always a wow moment,” said Hibbs, who works for Legends, the hospitality and marketing firm co-owned by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the Steinbrenner Family,

When the National Football League approving the Rams relocation from St. Louis to Los Angeles, Kroenke enlisted Legends to market his stadium project. Hibbs was hired soon after by Legends as the General Manager and CRO of the stadium project, essentially overseeing a group of 20 employees – as well as Rams and Chargers staff – as they go about selling the suites season tickets and PSL’s and sponsorships to Kroenke’s future palace.

It’s a process that will take a major step forward on Tuesday with the unveiling of the The LA Stadium Premiere Center, a massive showcase in Playa Vista built for future suite buyers, cornerstone advertising and naming rights partners and fans interested in purchasing Rams or Chargers season tickets.

When they visit, they’ll be escorted through a digital and interactive experience that will virtually put them in and around the stadium on a future game day in such a compelling way they’ll want to be a part of it.

And by part of it, we mean purchasing season seats or suites of course.

Hibbs has spent the last 15 months working on the showcase space after leaving his job with the Chicago Bears as their Vice President of Sales and Marketing, so it’s a big moment for him. He’s champing at the bit to finally let Los Angeles experience first hand – for now, interactively – a project uniquely designed to capture, entice and satisfy one of the most diverse markets in the world.

“People ask me, how’s it going and I tell them it’s been a ton of fun. Every single day on this project is wildly different than the day before,” Hibbs said. “These gigantic, mega real estate projects are always going to be complicated but this one even moreso. It’s bigger than everything else. It’s more than just a stadium. And then you’ve got two teams, so you want to make sure both the Spanos family and Kroenke family feel like I’m representing the project in the right way given the way the deal has been written.

“But ultimately, I want folks to walk into the Premiere Center and feel and understand it’s much more than just the NFL – although that’s a great foundation for a marketing and as an entertainment destination. It’s residential and office space. It’s a great retail and shopping area, a hotel and on and on and on. It’s a heck of a project and I wouldn’t have left my job in Chicago for anything else in our business.”

Capturing all that in a showcase center – picture a sales office at a new residential neighborhood, only on steroids – was quite the undertaking, especially for a market as big and diverse as Los Angeles.

Let alone as a stadium.

“It’s the notion of having something for everybody,” Hibbs said. “There’s a unique segment of the population, let’s say fans of entertainment that you want to have special seating for. They’re people who want to see and be seen. And we’ll have really cool seating and suite options that are really close to the field. We’ve got seven different suite types and most buildings have two, maybe three suite types that satisfy team and community and entrepreneurs.

“But at the end, when you walk in there for an NFL game day a majority of the folks in the building are going to be wearing some version of blue. Rams blue or Chargers blue.

“So you have to make sure you have cold beer and great hot dogs and food options. Great sight lines and video boards that bring replays and Red Zone to life like no other building. All the things the typical NFL fan is looking for in a venue. This can’t be all about the uniqueness of Hollywood. You have to have an environment that suits NFL fans and I think the architect, HKF, this is their fourth NFL building and they’re doing the Pro Football Hall of Fame project so they’re really uniquely suited to deal with that and I think we nailed it.”

Hibbs and his staff contemplated multiple showcase sites in order to cover the large metropolitan area or even a mobile center that could move around Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

They ultimately decided on the upscale Playa Vista area and its proximity to LAX and the actual site in Inglewood.

With construction completed and the public unveiling approaching, some of the highlights include:

– A front lobby featuring a reception desk is based on the shape of a wave, taking its inspiration from the stadium roof and a showcase for guests to learn more about the project and for walk-ups to submit their information.
– A tunnel room featuring a video that gives a preview of the stadium and district experience, from NFL games to concerts, restaurants and parks.
– A model room featuring a 25’ x 40’ acrylic model that integrates interactive projection mapping to provide visitors a full view of the entire 298-acre campus.
– A discussion gallery featuring five open-air pods each equipped with a digital presentation to provide greater details about features of the stadium·
– A suite experience leveraging technology to showcase seven different suite possibilities in one setting.
– A massive, curved screen featuring a 360-degree look at each suite configuration as well as a view of what the field will look like from each suite.
– A presentation room featuring a custom designed table that shows elements of the stadium design, high tech AV and large displays for group presentations.
– In addition, the event space features an indoor-outdoor hospitality area reflecting one of the iconic elements the new stadium The space features a four-box live feed of construction happening on site so guests can monitor progress at Hollywood Park.

“That was a challenge to take 20,000 feet in Playa Vista and build something that’s just outstanding and I think we’ve done it,” Hibbs said. “We went out and saw almost every preview center that’s been up and running over the last two years, and I think we’ve recreated it. I think we’ll have every new venue that happens over the next five years come to L.A. and look at it as the benchmark. And I think the people we’ve brought through have had that wow experience we we’re hoping for.”

He’ll get his answer beginning on Tuesday.