Within the extremely aggressive and worthwhile world {of professional} sports activities, stadium building has turn out to be an arms race. With profitable sponsorships and naming offers on the desk, and the potential jackpot of internet hosting an occasion just like the Tremendous Bowl, sports activities groups are scrambling for the largest buildings, the biggest screens, the flashiest personal suites, and probably the most tech-forward fan experiences.
However newer isn’t all the time higher. For a rising variety of skilled sports activities groups and stadium operators, it’s beginning to make much more sense to renovate their present buildings as an alternative of constructing new ones. Usually, they’re getting extra out of an previous constructing than they may have from a brand new one.
The NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars is one crew at the moment within the midst of a major stadium renovation project. Positioned on the sting of downtown on a web site each the crew and the town felt was too good to lose, the 31-year-old EverBank Stadium is now beneath development in a $1.4 billion renovation that can refresh the constructing for a full reopening in 2028.
Jaguars president Mark Lamping says the venture has all of the financial and sustainability advantages of not having to construct a venture from scratch, however dollar-for-dollar, it additionally offers again greater than a brand new stadium might. “You make the most of present infrastructure. So that you’re not going again and redoing utilities and large prices associated to visitors and transit and parking and all these issues that aren’t essentially considered as worth added to the client,” he says. “We’re investing, you already know, $1.4 billion, however a higher share of that $1.4 billion goes into fan-facing parts.”
Designed by the architecture firm HOK, the venture has been dubbed the Stadium of the Future, and it re-sculpts the previous stadium right into a curvaceous and fashionable facility, with wider concourses, a clear roof cover, extra seating choices, and 11 membership environments.
“Essentially it’s an ROI dialogue,” says Peter Broeder, design principal of HOK’s Kansas Metropolis studio. “As a result of the bones of that constructing had been in fine condition, it turned about deploying capital in a approach that may yield most worth for all events.”
A brand new-ish design
In comparison with the standard open-air bowl it’s changing, the brand new stadium is a space-age capsule wrapped in a mirrored facade. It’s basically a brand new shell wrapping across the metal and concrete bones of the stadium, all of that are nonetheless in adequate form to face for many years.
“[Team owner Shad Khan] was actually all for attempting to do one thing that made a fairly important architectural assertion for downtown Jacksonville,” Lamping says. “We clearly wished it to be a big departure from what our present stadium seems like. It’s not the identical stadium with some enhancements right here or there. We wished folks, once they checked out it, to see and really feel one thing that was completely totally different than what they’d skilled prior to now.”
The brand new stadium additionally solves a few of the issues which have bothered the crew and its followers for the reason that Nineties. The largest difficulty: punishingly scorching seats within the Florida summer time solar. “It’s extremely scorching contained in the stadium, notably on the east facet of the stadium in the course of the early elements of the season. So any answer that we had been going to provide you with needed to ship shade on all of the seats,” Lamping says.
HOK’s answer is a roof cover that covers a lot of the seats, mixed with a singular clear roof construction that shields followers and gamers from rain. Designed to make the most of the prevailing winds, the stadium directs them by 4 massive nook breezeways into the concourses and down onto the seating bowl, passively cooling the area and eliminating the necessity for air con.
The concourses themselves are additionally an necessary a part of the design, rising the circulate of air but additionally the consolation of followers. Lamping says the concourses now wrap across the complete stadium, and are as much as 5 instances as broad as what was beforehand there.
The renovation was primarily designed to enhance the fan expertise, however it’s additionally aiming to extend the stadium’s skill to host totally different sorts of occasions. To verify the area might deal with a variety of occasions, Lamping says the crew consulted live performance promoters, nationwide governing our bodies that is perhaps bringing occasions to Jacksonville, and representatives on the College of Florida and College of Georgia that use the stadium for faculty sports activities. The thought was for the stadium to be able to internet hosting something from a live performance to a global soccer match to a Tremendous Bowl.
“The character of dwell sports activities and occasions has developed considerably during the last 30 years. Venues right now should be way more multi-purpose in nature,” says Broeder.
That’s immediately linked to the underside line. A stadium that can be utilized for extra issues is used extra usually, bringing in additional income. “We would like this to be sustainable not solely by way of its development, but additionally by way of its ongoing performance and by way of the impression that it has on the neighborhood,” says Lamping. “Among the finest methods to try this is to have it’s busy.”
Location is essential to this multi-functionality, which is a part of the calculation groups are utilizing to find out whether or not to construct new or to renovate. Just like the Jaguars, the Carolina Panthers NFL crew in Charlotte determined to renovate its downtown-adjacent stadium.
“That constructing was a little bit of a greenfield web site when it was initially constructed. After which over time, the town has kind of grown to it and it’s proper on its doorstep,” says Nate Appleman, a director of HOK’s world sports activities, recreation, and leisure follow, which is designing the project. “It didn’t make sense for them to go away from what they’ve, which is a very nice web site with an actual good set of bones to construct from.”
One other advantage of renovation is that groups and stadium operators already perceive the place enhancements are wanted. “They know what’s working of their constructing they usually know the place their gaps are,” Appleman says. “Whenever you’re beginning out with a brand new constructing, all of that could be very nebulous firstly.”
That doesn’t imply the stadium renovation course of can be simple. In Jacksonville, for instance, development began in 2025 and can proceed by 2028, which implies the crew will play the 2026 season in a half-deconstructed stadium with diminished capability and the 2027 season greater than 100 miles away in Orlando.
“We knew getting in we had been going to have some complications,” says Lamping. “All that makes it a tougher proposition. But when we might have constructed an analogous stadium on a greenfield web site someplace else in Northeast Florida, the price would have been no less than $1 billion extra. So we expect we’re getting a superb worth.”
