Vikings Stadium Authority to Consider Architect, Retractable Roof Possibility

The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority is moving along with plans for a new Vikings stadium.  

Next week they'll put the stadium architecture contract out for bid.  They'll give the architect freedom to come up with new ideas that might look different from all the "concept" drawings revealed over the past ten years.  

"We feel good that we've done a lot of work so we kind of know what the project would cost and what it would look like," stadium authority CEO Ted Mondale said after the authority met at the Metrodome on Friday.  "But we're certainly going to step back and see what the state-of-the-art in 2012 looking forward to 2013 can bring us."

Mondale says a retractable roof is still under consideration, but that it won't be easy to include within the constraints of the stadium's $975 million budget.  Not only would making the roof retractable be expensive to add, possibly as much as $25 million, but it would also be expensive to maintain.  Mondale says officials at Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis have told him their roof costs $1.2 million to operate each year. "A full roof like Lucas Oil Field is a lot of money and we don't have money in the budget for it," Mondale says.  "But there could be a retractable roof feature. Maybe a glass window that opens that looks to downtown."

Another possibility is for the Vikings to put up additional money for the roof.

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