Vikings stadium construction today. pic.twitter.com/vfCsxXAmo0
— Rochelle Olson (@rochelleolson) June 20, 2014
As construction on the new Minnesota Vikings Stadium continues, the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority (MSFA) approved about $1.3 million in additions to it.
The additions will bump the price of the stadium up to up to $977.5 million.
KSTP reports the Vikings will pay for the costs of adding six additional escalators and nearly 1,200 more TVs inside the stadium.
The total number of escalators in the building will increase to 33, while the total number of TV’s in the stadium will climb to 2,000.
Vikings Vice President Lester Bagley told the MSFA board that other teams around the league told them that ease of vertical circulation is critical to stadiums. Bagley added that Indianapolis had told them they wished they had installed more escalators.
“We’re going to have a building that we can move food, people, emergency equipment around in a quick manner,” said MSFA executive director Ted Mondale, according to the Star Tribune.
The approval came as the MSFA continues to pore over the final construction documents to make sure the stadium fits within its budget.
MSFA Chair Michele Kelm-Helgen says the Authority has started the process of reconciling final drawings and the budget.
“Right now we don’t have any specific numbers,” Kelm-Helgen told Finance and Commerce, after the meeting. “We are just going through the whole process to see what the numbers are and to reconcile them.”
Some of the additional costs are expected as part of hosting the 2018 Super Bowl. No final decisions have been made, but the team would pay for additional suite capacity for the Super Bowl.
As part of the original stadium deal, the team agreed to contribute $477 million along with $348 million from the state and $150 million from the city of Minneapolis to build the stadium.
The Vikings also agreed to put up another $26.4 million if costs come back higher than expected, and the team also agreed to pay an additional $1.2 million for video-related changes they wanted.
