(Written by kencraw)

Yesterday before practice I took the time to take some pictures of the construction progress of the SAHPC next to the stadium:

As you can see from the above picture, not much of a hole has been dug yet. I was expecting there to have been more progress there. It’s important to remember that this is a 4 story structure that’s roof will be at the same level as the bottom of the stadium. As such, they’ve got to dig a pretty big hole.

But what you can see is that a bunch of steel beams have been delivered to the site. In fact, they ring the entire western side of the stadium as can be seen from this picture taken from on top of section E:

What’s also impressive is how far construction extends. I didn’t get a picture of this far around the stadium, but most of the south entrance to the stadium is blocked off. The furthest South picture I took was pointed at the I-House:

At the other end, you can see that it wraps all the way around to just short of the north tunnel (sorry for the camera angle):

My guess/understanding is that those steel beams are for the retaining wall that will be used to keep the big hole intact after excavation. So I suspect the next step is to either drive those steel beams into the ground or dig a trench and install them into it. I don’t really know how they’re going to do it.

I’ll take some more pictures at the final spring practice to show what progress has been made in the next few weeks.

(Note that you can click on the images to get a larger image)