KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Work remains on schedule for an early 2025 opening for the downtown stadium, with the look of the site changing almost daily as it starts to rise from the ground.
Later this week, concrete will be poured for the home team's locker room space on the service level at the site along Jackson Avenue, said Mohamed "Mo" Abbas, senior project manager for Denark Construction Inc. The concrete floor for the visiting team's locker room -- located on the third-base side -- already is down.
"We are on time," Abbas said with a smile Tuesday.
Next week structural steel will arrive at the site for installation, he said. Some 100 people are working on the site daily, Abbas said, and they're at it through rain, heat and pretty much any other kind of weather and time of the year.
Eventually large parts of the multi-use stadium itself will have a cover, allowing workers to carry on outside of weather exposure.
The stadium is expected to hold about 6,600, down a bit from previous public releases of about 7,000, said Doug Kirchhofer, CEO of Boyd Sports.
On Tuesday morning, the Knoxville Knox County Sports Authority approved two small design changes that will affect seating. Any extra costs will be absorbed by the developer, which amounts to entrepreneur businessman Randy Boyd, who owns the Double A Tennessee Smokies baseball team that some day will play there.
Kirchhofer said some seating will be changed for the first five rows behind home plate to allow for premium, at-seat service. The seating will be an upgrade for those willing to pay.
Also, the Smokies want to go ahead and put in more seating for a left-field picnic area on what at first was going to be a wide grassy berm. That'll allow accommodation for about 500 fans total.
Kirchhofer said it's possible there will be more design tweaks as the project progresses.
A Smokies flag now marks the home plate area of the future stadium. Batters standing at home plate will be looking out to the south with the downtown skyline off to the right.
Construction of the stadium is taking place pretty much at the same time as separate, privately developed buildings that will house office and residential space.
One building will feature condos and be named in honor of the late Black Knoxville artist Beauford Delaney. Boyd Sports offices also will be in the Delaney.
Separately, there'll be a two-building apartment complex linked with a skybridge that will be named after William Francis Yardley, a Knoxville civil rights leader and Knoxville’s first Black attorney.
All the buildings are in close proximity to each other on the stadium site, so all the crews need to work together as they move ahead.
The stadium has an estimated cost of about $114 million. The baseball team, affiliated with the Chicago Cubs, will play in Sevier County next season, as it has for about 20 years, and then will move in 2025 to Knoxville, the previous home of the team.
When they come back to Knoxville, they'll be called the Knoxville Smokies.
