On a gray and soggy Friday, there was a palpable sense of excitement at the New England Patriots offices in Foxboro.
Granted, the team’s home opener against the New York Jets was just two days away. But it was clear that the buzz of energy had every bit as much to do with the hulking new mass of concrete and blue steel girders that now loom over the adjacent Foxboro Stadium.
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“It’s hard to believe that 18 months ago this was a parking lot,” said Tim McManus, project manager for CMGI Field, as he gazed through his plastic safety glasses out over the sea of dirt that will one day serve as the Patriots’ bright green gridiron.
“I think the fans who come to the games this season are going to be shocked at how far it’s come,” McManus said. “They’ll realize that this is actually happening, that it’s a reality.”
Although McManus estimates that the new $325 million CMGI Field is only slightly more than halfway done, the frame and cement seating bowl are complete, which gives onlookers more than enough room for imagination.
As the most expensive, privately financed investment project under way in the country, CMGI Field has provided plenty of work for some Rhode Island construction firms.
Five Rhode Island companies have worked on the project since it began in March 2000, with a combined contract value of $30 million. Capco Steel Corp. of Providence erected the 68,000-seat stadium’s steel framing, which was completed last spring.
Rhode Island-based firms J.L. Marshall and Sons, H. Carr & Sons, Grande East and Swimex also have done work on the stadium.
Crews now are also building the playing surface.
Longtime Patriots groundskeeper Dennis Brolin is overseeing that part of the project.
“He’s like a kid in a candy store,” McManus said of Brolin.
Drainage pipes and heating tubes lay across the graded field, which will be buried under a foot and a half of sand, soil and then fresh sod. The playing surface should be done by December, McManus said, allowing plenty of time for the turf to take root before CMGI’s official opening in April for the next soccer season for the New England Revolution.
Workers now are framing the coaches’ offices, meeting rooms and storage areas. The stadium’s 350 concession stands – compared to Foxboro Stadium’s 117 – are taking shape as caverns of cinder blocks circling the lower concourse.
The bulk of the remaining construction, however, will be rounded out in CMGI’s soon-to-be plush club boxes and luxury suites, which now are vast corridors of cement and metal framing.
Each club section – spanning from end zone to end zone on either side of the stadium, with 40-foot ceilings – totals 60,000 square feet, which is roughly 25 percent larger than a football field, McManus said.
And 80 luxury suites above the club level average between 800 and 1,800 square feet, some totaling more than twice the size of corporate suites in even the newest NFL stadiums, according to David M. Pearlstein, director of premium seat sales for the Patriots.
The club is marketing the suites and club boxes to companies as “satellite offices” that they can book any time throughout the year. Any owner of club seats, which range from $3,750 to $6,000 per year, can reserve space in the club lounge for business meetings, dinners or parties at no extra charge.
Rhode Island companies and individuals have bought about 25 percent of the club seats and luxury suites, Pearlstein said. More than half the club seats have been sold and fewer than 10 suites are left, he said.
“Small and medium-sized businesses will be able to use this as their private club,” McManus said. “Looking down onto the field, it’s a pretty cool space.”
That’s an understatement coming from McManus, who given the chance will gush over the stadium’s views.
Recently, he ushered Patriots owner Robert Kraft to a future nosebleed seat perched in the highest reaches of the eastside upper level, tucked in the corner of the end zone.
“He wanted to sit in the worst seat in the house, to make sure we had the best sight lines imaginable,” McManus said. “Even there, the views are unbelievable. It’s a lot like the old Boston Garden, like you’re right on top of the game.”
Indeed, it seems every design element is geared toward fans having a prime view of the field.
The stadium’s main gate is at field level on the north side, offering an immediate end-zone-to end-zone view of the field and the north end’s 1,200 square-foot, high-definition video screen. Fans will pass by a 40-foot lighthouse and underneath a 125-foot bridge spanning the entrance – the frames for both of which are erected already.
On the lower concourse – which at 70 feet wide will be the NFL’s widest – the upper deck seating level is raised enough to provide sweeping field views. And the sprawling, three-story clubs have ceiling-to-floor windows. “In most stadiums, you lose sight of the field as soon as you step into the club,” McManus said. “Not here.”
