U-M Athletic Department leaders are praising the work done in short order on Michigan Stadium that is set to wrap up in time for the new football season.
“Not since Fielding H. Yost coached his point-a-minute teams at Michigan and then developed the plan for building Michigan Stadium has the University of Michigan Athletic Department seen such engineering prowess as it has witnessed in the last nine months on the corner of Stadium and Main,” states an article on mgoblue.com.
The $226 million renovation and expansion project got underway the week after the last 2007 home football game. And while the project will not be completed until 2010, the first stage is finished and the stadium is being put back together now in time for fans to enjoy the season opener Aug. 30 against Utah.
In praising the work of Barton-Malow, mgoblue.com notes that all the excavated dirt and backfill around the concourse if piled up would equal an 18-foot-high mound of dirt above the entire football field.
The article also states that in nine months, the construction crews have built and/or put down:
• two family restrooms
• six football fields worth of elevated slabs for the upper concourses
• 52 football fields worth of underground utilities (Storm, sanitary, water and gas)
• 151 caissons
• 17,000 square feet of new space in the north buildings
• More than 108,333 yards of broadcast cable
• 7,300 tons of steel fabricated and erected (in six months) for both sidelines structures
The work has been done using 240,000 person hours with no lost-time injuries, the athletic department reports.
