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Kentucky Wildcats Football: The New Commonwealth Stadium

By Shelby Caudill

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Some media members got to tour the newly renovated Commonwealth Stadium this week and are seemingly impressed. Jennifer Smith of the Lexington-Herald Leader, had a lot of positivity and notes from her tour. Take a look at what she had to say in her article.

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"As he took about 50 media members in hard hats on a tour of the active construction site, Russ Pear promised again that work on the $120 million facility would be done in time.“The expectation is that all of the amenities for all of our fans, for the media, for everybody is better and is ready to go for the first game,” Kentucky’s senior associate athletics director for capital projects said Wednesday.Pear explained as he stood on the new artificial turf field whose installation he called one of the first major milestones at the stadium, which is in the middle of undergoing a complete facelift.The field, with its checkerboard end zones and team areas, looks ready for a game, but the areas around it are still chaos.“It will be an active construction zone until the first game,” Pear said as he pointed out the multiple levels of VIP seating on the south side of the stadium.When pressed on whether or not he could look fans and season ticket holders in the eye and say it will be ready, Pear seemed confident.“There is a lot of work to do; there is a lot of work to do,” he said. “And if I said, ‘Boy, there’s not much work to do’ you’d all think I was nuts, more than I am. There’s a lot of work to do. But the commitment is there to get it done, to get it ready.”There are going to be hiccups and discomfort for some. He specifically mentioned workers working extra shifts and weekends to move the project along.Or Aramark, the company in charge of concessions, wanting to move into their new fully equipped kitchen two months before the opener. That won’t happen.“They’re not going to get two months,” Pear said. “They know it, and they’re doing what they need to do to make that work. That’s what you have to have in a project like this.”Though the dust, debris and plastic curtains separating one section from another, there were plenty of signs of progress, like the stacked limestone that goes all the way around the bottom exterior of the stadium.Limestone also lines seating areas at the front entrance of the stadium facing Nicholasville Road.“It’s going to look really neat on that side,” he said, noting that the landscaping still has to begin. “It’s going to look really nice.”"

Although things were looking weary about things not being completed by game day, it’s looking like it’ll be game day ready by September 5th.

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