Draft:Soldier Field renovation

Soldier Field

Soldier Field in 2020
Address	1410 Special Olympics Drive
Location	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Coordinates	41.8623°N 87.6167°W / 41.8623; -87.6167
Owner	Chicago Park District
Construction
Renovated	2002–2003
Reopened	September 29, 2003 (2003-09-29)
Construction cost	US$632 million; $1.08 billion in 2015 dollars)
Architect	Wood + Zapata, Inc.; Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects
Project manager	Hoffman Associates
Structural engineer	Thornton Tomasetti
Services engineer	Ellerbe Becket
General contractor	Turner/Barton Malow/Kenny

In 2002 and 2003, Soldier Field (a stadium in the United States city of Chicago) underwent a substantial renovation. Designed by

The renovation followed several less-substantial renovations to the facility in previous decades.

Original structure

The u-shaped section in the south end of the grandstand could accommodate 32,000 seated spectators.

Even before its completion, when discussions were being made for the stadium to host the 1926 Army-Navy Game, it became apparent that the elongated horseshoe shape of the stadium did not lend itself naturally to football, with plans being made for a game-day layout that used temporary seating.

• 
  1926 Army-Navy Game at the stadium
• 
  West colonnade photographed in the stadium's earlier years. The twin colonnades are a distinctive feature of the stadium's original facade.
• 
  Stadium in the early 1930s

Earlier alterations and renovations

1930s–1960s

South end grandstand and Park District headquarters building

Addition of race track

• 
  Photograph of a 1951 auto race, providing a view of the south grandstand and Chicago Park District headquarters added in ____
• 
  1941 postcard (showing stadium as viewed from the west)
• 
  1952 marketing brochure
• 
  Soldier Field circa 1963 (viewed from the east)

1970s

Soldier Field in 1974 (viewed from the northwest), with makeshift stands installed in the north end zone

Despite talk of ultimately replacing the venue with a new stadium, soon ahead of the Bears' 1971 move into the stadium, the city began minor renovations to better accommodate the team. The stadium's plank bench seating began to be replaced, with 34,000 seats being installed with backrests. In addition, temporary box seats were installed atop the stadium's track in order to bring the first rows of spectators closer to the football field. The presence of these seats blocked any return of auto racing to the venue. In addition, the natural grass field of the venue was replaced with a $206,000 Astroturf playing surface. The total cost of these changes was $700,000. This was paid for initially by bonds which were backed by tax revenue. The cost was recouped by the public over the next three seasons in their 10% share of Bears ticket revenue.

In 1971, an architectural committee that had been tasked by Mayor Daley to assess possible renovations found that the stadium could be viable as a long-term venue for the Bears if new seating was constructed in the north end zone that would increase the capacity for Bears games. This would cut-off a portion of the original stadium structure’s sideline stands, creating a larger south arena of the stadium where the Bears' field would be located, as well as a smaller north arena on the end featuring the Park District Headquarters Building that could be used to host other events.

In response to the news that Soldier Field would be able to be renovated to serve as a longer-term home to the team, Halas remarked that he was happy that the venue could be made more suitable for the Bears, but that he still desired to build a new home for his team. Halas remarked, "I am very happy with the arrangement, which means that if we have to play in Soldier Field longer than our three-year lease, I will be willing to do so." The Bears signed a final lease agreement for its initial three-year commitment to play at the venue, which saw the Bears provide the Bears 12% of their ticket revenue, with a minimum payment of $788,827.

In October 1971, structural tests of the stands determined that they could be repaired. Later that same month, the architectural committee estimated that the cost of a more extensive renovation would be between $12 million and 22.3 million. The committee also provided cost estimates for options to make even further changes, such as a second-deck or a canopy over the seating bowl. The architectural committee's final report discovered that the venue’s original construction had been built on caissons made of low-quality concrete. This discovery demonstrated that the stadium’s original construction had suffered likely due to political corruption by politically-connected contractors. The stadium had long required frequent repair work.

During the Bears first season at Soldier Field, temporary bleachers that the Bears had previously used as sideline seating at Wrigley Field were placed in the north endzone. After the 1973 season, permanent stands were constructed in the north end zone at a cost of approximately $600,000. Further expense was spent on repair work in the southeast stands.

1980s renovation

Soldier Field in 1988, as it appeared following its 1980s renovations (viewed from the south)

1998 Chicago Fire soccer game, with sideline suites visible

Soldier Field in 2001

The Bears were promised by the Chicago Park District Board President Patrick L. O'Malley a more extensive renovation costing between $15 million and $20 million, though this was soon pushed-off to the future. The future of Soldier Field was unclear in the years that followed. Proposals were floated both for renovation and replacement of Soldier Field as the Bears' home stadium.

In January 1975, the Public Building Comission's executive director argued that the city should give the stadium a $35 million overhaul. However, Mayor Daley was again interested in the idea of demolishing it and building a new stadium. Daley faced criticism from his 1975 Chicago mayoral election opponent John J. Hoellen Jr. over the prospect of spending taxpayer money on a new stadium. Daley ultimately claimed that he preferred renovation over the more expensive construction cost of a new stadium. Halas, however, was adamant that he unsatisfied with the sightlines, pitch, and far distance of the seating at Soldier Field.

Halas unsuccessfully made overtures in 1975 to the suburbs of Arlington Heights for a new stadium to be built there, but this did not materialize.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2023/6/11/23754606/bears-stadium-arlington-heights-naperville-chicago-odds

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/chicago-bears-arlington-racecourse-offer-new-stadium-soldier-field-nfl/?zephr_sso_ott=odMZgO

By 1977, Mayor Daley's administration was advancing plans that would have seen a second-deck of seating added to the stadium along with roughly 100 luxury boxes at an estimated cost of between $35 million and $50 million. The prospect of renovating the existing stadium was heavily backed by Chicago Park District Superintendent Ed Kelley. However, Daley died in office before these plans could come to fruition.

Daley’s successor Michael Bilandic established a panel to assess the stadium situation, with former governor Richard Ogilvie at its head. Ogilvie was quick to dismiss the prospect of renovating the existing stadium. Park District Superintendent Ed Kelley, however, advocated for a renovation, and proposed two options. One would cost approximately $25 million and another would cost approximately $51 million. Mayor Bilandic immediately publicly dismissed that latter option due to its requirement that the stadium be closed for at least 21 months of construction.

As a precursor to the 2003 renovation, in 1978, Parks Board President O'Malley suggested to the Chicago City Council that one possibility that Chicago Park District and City Hall officials were heavily considering would be to build a new stadium structure inside of the exterior shell of the original stadium, as he believed that this would cost less than a new $200 million stadium.

While the city was figuring out the future of the stadium, a modest $3.5 million of renovation work was agreed to in December 1978. In this renovation, the temporary stands in the north end were replaced by a permanent grandstand. The stadium’s capacity was increased by 2,000 seats. The Astroturf was replaced. Work was also undertaken to begin replacing the plank seating of the stadium with individual seats that had backrests and armrests. Halas publicly expressed that he'd be fine with two further seasons at Soldier Field, and expressed hope that the team could find a way to make it their home for two more decades. Halas' autobiography, published in 1979, called the stadium an "architectural gem" that suffered "vast" problems as a football venue.

In the 1979 Chicago mayoral election, Bilandic's opponent for the Democratic Party nomination, Jane Byrne, criticized the idea of building a new stadium to replace Soldier Field, and criticized the Ogilvie-led panel as having accomplished very little. Byrne voiced opposition for publicly funding a stadium, calling a stadium, "a low priority." Byrne won the mayoral election. After taking office, Byrne advanced the less expensive of the two proposals that Ed Kelley had earlier made to renovate the stadium. While Bears management was unsatisfied by this plan, they expressed a willingness to accept it. Advocates of Chicago parkland, however, opposed keeping the stadium, preferring it be torn down in favor of new parkland. One such advocate, Pat Ryan, proposed in a letter to the Chicago Tribune that instead a new stadium should be built over railroad tracks in the South Loop.

Mayor Byrne and others worked out agreements with the Bears that resulted in renovation work in the early 1980s at a cost of roughly $32 million, largely funded by the public through real estate taxes.

The renovations saw the faults of the underground support of the stadium, which had been built poorly in the 1920s, remedied. The renovations saw the earlier elimination of the stadium's track made permanent with the lower rows of now-permanent seating covering where the track once was. New permanent box seats saw the removal of the original wall that had, since the 1920s, separated the grandstands from the field, which had featured a decorative molding pattern at their top as well as rings from which bunting could be hung. The renovations coincided with the addition of 55 luxury boxes at the top of the grandstand, which were funded for by the Bears separately from the other renovation work at a cost of $3 million.

In 1982, a new press box, as well as 60 skyboxes, were added to the stadium, boosting its capacity to 66,030.. The renovation work was completed in time for the 1982 season.

Later, in 1988, 56 more skyboxes were added, increasing capacity to 66,946. Capacity was slightly increased to 66,950 in 1992. By 1994, however, capacity was slightly reduced to 66,944. During the renovation, seating capacity was reduced to 55,701 by building a grandstand in the open end of the U shape. This moved the field closer to both ends in order to move the fans closer to the field, at the expense of seating capacity.

Design

In late 1998, Benjamin T. Wood, who had done design work for earlier stadium proposals, decided to re-assess the dimensions of Soldier Field. After measuring the distance between the colonnades of the existing stadium structures, Wood determined that there was enough space between them for a new modern seating bowl to be constructed. Wood would later recount that he initially intended to, once and for all, prove that the dimensions of the existing stadium structure made it impossible to renovate it with a modern seating bowl, but ultimately discovered that it might be possible to. Wood next met with Bears officials who gave him their approval to begin design work on a possible overhaul of the stadium.

In order to squeeze a modern seating bowl into the narrow confines required to preserve the historic stadium’s exterior, Wood came up with the concept of an asymmetric seating bowl that places all of the luxury box seating along one side of the stadium and placing all of the club seating sections on the opposite side of the stadium. Wood's design also repurposed some ideas from previous designs he had completed for the Bears.

Wood brought the firm of Chicago architect Dirk Lohan aboard the project, with their work largely focusing on the stadium grounds. Portions of surface parking were eliminated and replaced with new greenspace in hopes of appealing to the sensibilities advocates for the preservation of Chicago parklands and urban design activists who might see the addition of new greenspace as in keeping with the vision of architect Daniel Burnham (who authored the Plan of Chicago), as well as the vision of businessman and lakefront park advocate Montgomery Ward.

One impediment to more advanced design work for renovation was the need to know how the structural support system of the existing structure was built. Original blueprints for Soldier Field could not be tracked. V3 Companies was hired to conduct a survey of the stadium’s support system. Two weeks into the survey, surveyors entered one of several forgotten office spaces underneath the stands, where in the drawer of a drafting table they discovered historic blueprints indicating the locations of all of the stadium’s support columns. These blueprints helped to hasten the pace of progress on design work.

The preservation of the exterior is an example of facadism. A similar endeavor of constructing a new stadium bowl within the confines of a historic stadium's exterior was done with Leipzig's Red Bull Arena, which similarly built a modern stadium while preserving the exterior of the original Zentralstadion.

• 
  Interior view of the new seating bowl constructed in the 2003 renovation
• 
  New suite and club level structure (left) and the eastern colonnade of the original stadium facade (right)
• 
  Viewed from the east
• 
  Viewed from the south
• 
  Viewed from the east

Funding

Wood and Lohan's renovation design was introduced to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. By May 1999, Bears team president Ted Phillips publicly disclosed that the Bears had found a solution that would create a new stadium structure at Soldier Field while preserving the historic colonnade edifice of the original.

The Bears implemented a focused public relations strategy to garner support for the renovation. This strategy sought to sway public discourse away from the public financing that the Bears were seeking for the renovation, and instead towards the new greenspace that would be created by the renovation. This strategy saw a degree of success in shaping media reports.

The NFL had committed a $100 million loan to any new NFL stadiums, which the Bears used to put pressure on the Illinois State Legislature to approve the public funding plan.

Reports alleged that horse-racing businessman Richard Duchossois and Bears stakeholder Pat Ryan privately secured Illinois Governor George Ryan to support the funding plan. Ryan, incidentally, had been an opponent of the 1980s renovations to Soldier Field before he acquired a stake in Bears ownership.

In August 2000, the original funding proposal for the expected $587 million cost of the renovation would have seen the Bears and NFL provide a combined $350 in funding and the state of Illinois government provide $150 million worth of tax subsidies. On November 15, 2000, when the final stadium deal was announced, the NFL and Bears' contribution had decreased to $200 million and the public funding of the stadium (including the cost of issuing bonds) standing at more the $400 million.

At the time the funding deal was announced, the Bears expected to raise a portion of their contribution by selling the stadium's naming rights. In the aftermath of the

The renovation ultimately cost $675 million to complete.

Opposition

Opponents of the project.___________

The renovation plan faced substantial criticism when it was announced. Bears fans and radio hosts, such as WSCR's Mike North, criticized the small seating capacity of the new venue, and others have criticized the Park District's lack of care to the field surface after the first seasonal freeze and a refusal to consider a new-generation artificial surface, leaving the Bears to play on dead grass.

Proponents of the renovation argued it was direly needed because of aging and cramped facilities. Soldier Field was given an award in design excellence by the American Institute of Architects in 2004.

Construction

Overhead view of construction work in 2002, with the original seating bowl demolished

On January 19, 2002, the night of the Bears' playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, demolition began as tailgate fires still burned in trash cans in the parking lots. The removal of 24,000 stadium seats in 36 hours by Archer Seating Clearinghouse, a speed record never exceeded since, was the first step in building the new Soldier Field. Nostalgic Bears fans recalling the team's glory seasons (especially 1985), as well as some retired players, picked up their seats in the South parking lot. The foremen on the job were Grant Wedding, who installed the seats himself in 1979, and Mark Wretschko, an executive for the factory who made the new seats. As Soldier Field underwent renovation, the Bears spent the 2002 NFL season playing their home games at Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois. On September 29, 2003, the Bears played their first game at the renovated Soldier Field, in which they were defeated by the Green Bay Packers, 38–23. The total funding for the renovation cost $632 million; taxpayers were responsible for $432 million while the Chicago Bears and the NFL contributed $200 million.

Reception

The new seating bowl's western grandstand's imposing cantilever over the western colonnade of the original facade has popularly been described by detractors of the design as looking like a spaceship that has crashed landed into the original stadium

The New York Times named the renovated Soldier Field one of the five best new buildings of 2003.

Several writers and columnists attacked the Soldier Field renovation project as an aesthetic, political and financial nightmare. The project received mixed reviews within the architecture community, with criticism from civic and preservation groups. Prominent architect and native Chicagoan Stanley Tigerman called it "a fiasco. Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin dubbed it the "Eyesore on the Lake Shore," while others called it "Monstrosity on the Midway" or "Mistake by the Lake". The renovation was described by some as if "a spaceship landed on the stadium". Lohan responded:

I would never say that Soldier Field is an architectural landmark. Nobody has copied it; nobody has learned from it. People like it for nostalgic reasons. They remember the games and parades and tractor pulls and veterans' affairs they've seen there over the years. I wouldn't do this if it were the Parthenon. But this isn't the Parthenon.

Aftermath

On September 23, 2004, as a result of the renovation, a 10-member federal advisory committee unanimously recommended that Soldier Field be delisted as a National Historic Landmark. The recommendation to delist was prepared by Carol Ahlgren, an architectural historian at the National Park Service's Midwest Regional Office in Omaha, Nebraska, who was quoted in Preservation Online stating, "if we had let this stand, I believe it would have lowered the standard of National Historic Landmarks throughout the country. ... If we want to keep the integrity of the program, let alone the landmarks, we really had no other recourse." The stadium lost the landmark designation on February 17, 2006.

Los Angeles memorial coliseum

References

Sources cited

• Ford, Liam T. A. (2009) [2009]. Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City (1st ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Category:Soldier Field