SBJ Facilities: Tropicana Field’s roof repair readies for final stretch

Alone in my home for five days with my wife and daughter out of town, I had all these big plans. And then I did nothing. And people, it was great.

AECOM Hunt, working with joint venture partner, Hennessy, is roughly a third of the way through rebuilding Tropicana Field’s roof, part of a larger $60 million rehab project that will be completed by mid-March in advance of the Rays’ home season opener.

The Rays, whose sale to a Jacksonville-based group led by Patrick Zalupski closed last week, played the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field after Hurricane Milton shredded Tropicana’s roof. The AECOM Hunt-Hennessy JV is using an updated version of the PTFE material destroyed last October. The issue wasn’t with the material, said AECOM Hunt EVP/Sports Ken Johnson, the problem was its age: The 35-year-old material couldn’t stand up to Milton’s roughly 100-mph winds. Johnson would know the details; AECOM Hunt helped build the stadium, which opened in 1990.

Working with Geiger Engineers, the contractor has fabricated 22 of the 24 panels that will make up the stadium’s covering, with 10 of the panels -- roughly 200-foot wedges of stretchy material -- installed as of last Friday.

The new roof will be “structurally, exactly the same roof system,” Johnson said. “We pulled out our old drawings, the old shop drawings. A lot of that fabrication is being done in the same manner.”

The massive expanses of PTFE -- I wrote about PTFE and ETFE in 2022 if you need to brush up -- are pulled in opposite directions by eight hydraulic come along winches to balance the force and stretch out the roof material. Two panels are being completed each week at this stage of the project. Once 15 panels are in place, then the outfield and behind home plate sections of the stadium below will be watertight, and more extensive work in the stadium below can kick off in earnest. Johnson expects the roof to be in place by the end of 2025, giving the Rays a home while their new owners figure out the organization’s long-term stadium future.

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On the journey to modernizing college football stadiums, many universities have demolished entire sides of their stadiums. Tennessee has instead taken a surgical approach to revamping the 104-year-old Neyland Stadium during the last few years.

The latest incision happened on the stadium’s west side 50-yard-line, just beneath the upper deck on the main concourse where UT opened 10 Founders Suites this fall. They’re the giant stadium’s most exclusive premium spaces and part of a multiyear $337 million renovation at the stadium that’s progressing in conjunction with another project that will append a mixed-use development with retail and a hotel onto Neyland’s south side.

Alabama, Georgia and Texas A&M also have installed ultra-exclusive, founders-level premium spaces reserved for the richest donors in their stadiums. They cost buyers millions of dollars annually and are major revenue generators.

“Any premium seating project we do in Neyland Stadium helps fund non-revenue generating renovations,” said UT Deputy AD and CRO Brady Hart. Though the Volunteers don’t disclose Founders Suites revenue, they’re “a significant piece of the equation to be able to deliver this Neyland Stadium project.”

Founders Suite holders enter the nearly 102,000-capacity stadium through a new lobby, taking one of two exclusive elevators straight to their suite level. These empty into a common area featuring a bar and custom cocktails. Space to mingle and interact outside of the individual suites was a priority for the buyers, Hart said.

Each of the 10 Founders Suites are slightly different, owing to the eccentricities of a building that first came out of the ground during Warren Harding’s ill-fated presidency. And since donors are paying significant (but undisclosed) money for them on multiyear leases, they got a say in their suites’ design.

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Populous produced the initial concept and stayed on through the project essentially as Tennessee’s owners’ rep, while The S/L/A/M Collaborative served as design architect and Cope Architecture as the architect of record.

Choice selections

Suite buyers could choose between two basic aesthetics, one recalling a wood-paneled country club aesthetic and the other brighter and more modern. Designers then worked with the donors to individualize each suite’s layout. At least two meetings were held with each of the buyers. Some donors brought in their own interior designers, while one of the buyers was an interior designer. Fabrics, materials and countertops were among a half-dozen customizable elements.

“Rarely are we working with nine or 10 donors and having such a catered input to what the design wants to be,” said SLAM Sports Design Leader Dane Hawthorne. “But this really is an extension of their living room and their showcase piece.”

Each suite’s size roughly lands between 900 and 1,000 square feet; those on either end of the row are the largest. A retractable NanaWall separates indoors from the outdoor front porch, with its roughly 18 Irwin luxury seats and Bromic outdoor heaters embedded in a wood-paneled ceiling above. The suites come with 24 tickets and all-inclusive, high-end food and beverage service from Aramark Sports + Entertainment.

“If there wasn’t a game going on outside, you could feel like you were at home hosting a bunch of guests,” said Hart.

As the NBA casts a covetous eye toward Europe, venues are sure to be a foundational aspect for any teams that join what appears to be an inevitable NBA Europe competition.

The timing for Valencia Basket couldn’t be better. The club, a Spanish powerhouse in one of Europe’s top basketball nations, just opened the new $470 million, 15,600-capacity Roig Arena. Pronounced “roach” in the local dialect, the venue was privately funded by Juan Roig, a Spanish grocery titan who owns Valencia Basket’s men’s and women’s teams. It was designed by HOK and ERRE, and American venue executive Aran Rush consulted on the arena’s opening.

“The No. 1 thing is how this arena is so integrated into the community. Most arenas open up for events; this arena is open seven days a week,” said Rush, who previously held operations positions at Intuit Dome (assistant GM) and Golden 1 Center (VP) prior to striking out on his own.

A central piece of the venue’s openness to the community is Mercat, the public food court that is open daily and features some of the best restaurants in Valencia. One outlet, Hundred Burgers, sells the world’s top-ranked burger, according to burgerdudes (who sampled more than 900 burgers across 63 countries). Bocadillos, a Spanish sandwich staple, are represented as well. Miguel Martí is the arena’s executive chef, overseeing a menu that includes paella traditionally cooked over wood flame.

The basketball team’s executives have been working on the arena project for more than a decade. They met Rush while touring the Kings’ Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. Rush’s focus in Valencia was helping eliminate uncertainty and establishing systems so the arena succeeds operationally long term.

It has the tools to do so. Roig Arena boasts state-of-the-art Wi-Fi and DAS systems -- rare in Europe -- from Extreme Networks. All of its club seats feature electrical outlets, and the building is full of digital LED displays like any new American venue, including Europe’s highest resolution scoreboard and largest video wall (both courtesy of LG). Fifteen of the 60 concerts already booked have sold out.

Roig Arena’s exterior is striking. It’s covered in LED, making it capable of chameleon-like shifts in appearance. The facade’s northwest corner suddenly dips making the building look like it’s smiling, an LED display sitting between its “lips.”

It’s the kind of building with which the NBA would probably like to be associated. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said this summer that NBA Europe is still probably two to three years away, and franchise fees are likely to exceed $500 million.

A spokesperson for the arena and Valencia Basket said they had no news regarding any involvement with the potential new NBA league. The NBA would likely be more interested in Barcelona and Madrid, but on a continent otherwise lacking top indoor venues, Roig Arena gives the smaller Valencia market a shot it might otherwise not have had.

“There is huge opportunity for venue development in all of Europe,” Rush said. “I think they’re years behind, but I think this building has jumped several levels and is going to surprise a lot of people.”

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For the Mariners’ return to MLB postseason play, Sodexo Live is selling Claws and Caviar -- Pacific snow crab claws piled into a souvenir Mariners mini helmet and served with a caviar crème fraiche dip, fresh lemon and a chive garnish (did you know wild chives are abundant in the Pacific Northwest?) for $29.99. I’m eating this, but can I get a batting glove, too?

This Wall Street Journal story about student loan debt strangling Gen X features this searing nut graf (to use some journalism jargon): “The six million-plus borrowers aged 50 to 61 have the highest average balance of any age group, at $47,857, according to Federal Student Aid data. Now, as parents and grandparents, they are passing along a skepticism toward higher education and its hefty price tag, part of the broader unraveling of America’s ‘college for all’ ideology.”

• I wrote about The Riverside Stand at Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage, a significant daily revenue generator (of the highest class) for the Premier League club that SBJ’s North American readers should know about.
• In the era of augmented and virtual reality, physical models of stadiums and arenas still resonate with sports teams and their customers. I visited The Model Shop in Torrance, Calif., to ask its owner Scott Harrington why that’s case even in 2025.
• Oak View Group hired longtime arena business leader Amy Latimer (an SBJ Game Changer in 2011) as its chief business officer. Latimer joins from Delaware North where she spent the last two-plus years as that company’s COO. Delaware North hired Jamie Obletz, who has been promoted following four-plus years running Sportservice and Patina Group, as Latimer’s successor.
• An AECOM Hunt and Turner Construction joint venture will build the Browns’ $2.4 billion stadium in Brook Park, Ohio. The venue is designed by HKS, and Haslam Sports Group is working with Lincoln Property Company on the surrounding mixed-use development.
• The Cardinals pivoted from a $100 million upgrade to their Tempe practice facility announced earlier this year to building a new one in north Phoenix. The roughly $200 million, 30-acre practice facility and team HQ is expected to open in 2028.
• New Mexico is launching a feasibility study looking at modernizing University Stadium and developing its south campus into a mixed-use economic development district, selecting an architecture joint venture of Gensler and Dekker -- the latter a New Mexico-based firm with extensive UNM campus experience -- for the study.
• Amid the tourism drop in Las Vegas, my SBJ colleague Ben Fischer reports that business remains brisk at Allegiant Stadium. It hosted nearly 482,000 guests in Q2 2025, with Raiders President Sandra Douglass Morgan noting that nearly two-thirds of people attending Allegiant Stadium festivities say they’re in town specifically for that event -- an indicator the stadium is driving economic growth, not cannibalizing existing spending.
• My SBJ colleague Josh Carpenter notes that the LPGA gave an early look at its 2028 Solheim Cup hospitality offerings last Tuesday night at Valhalla Golf Club, with the Kentucky venue set to host the tournament in 2028. Four products were teased at the invite-only event.
• With construction underway at NYCFC’s Etihad Park, my SBJ colleague Joe Lemire took a tour to see how work was progressing and learn more about the project and its cutting-edge tech. You can see it here.