DICK'S SPORTING GOODS PARK,

HOME OF THE COLORADO RAPIDS AT PRAIRIE GATEWAY

In September 2005, Kroenke Sports Enterprises (KSE) broke ground on the new Colorado Rapids Major League Soccer Stadium and Prairie Gateway development.  The 1,000-acre development is located just north of I-70 at 56th Avenue and Quebec Street in Commerce City.  The stadium and Sports Park occupies 360 acres of the Prairie Gateway development, which will includes 600,000 square feet of retail space, a new civic center, and a visitor’s center and educational facility for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  The site also contains one of the largest urban nature preserves in the country, as well as one of the few remaining short-grass prairies in existence.  Once completed, it will be the world’s largest soccer complex with 24 playing fields.

HOK Sports designed the stadium with a unique look to reflect the shape of the Rocky Mountains.  This has been accomplished with the use of a number of massive, angled steel panels that have been arranged to form a pitched mountain over the seating areas on both sides of the field.  The stadium holds 18,000 soccer fans in a combination of 11,000 fixed seats and 7,000 bleacher seats.  Bleacher and lawn seating for 2,000 additional fans will be located on the berm area at the north end of the stadium.  A total of 22 luxury suites line both sides of the field.  The stadium can be configured to hold up to 26,000 for concerts.

Kumar and Associates, Inc.  has been retained by KSE, through the Romani Group/ICON Venue Group, to perform the construction observation and materials testing services for the project.  Our services included the observation and testing of earthwork for the excavation and backfill of the stadium bowl and walls, structural concrete testing for the foundations, walls, bleachers and concourses, reinforcing steel observation, structural masonry observation and testing as well as the inspection of the structural steel erection.  In addition to field observations of structural steel erection, we provided fabrication shop inspection in various structural steel fabrication facilities located in Colorado, Arkansas and Nebraska.