Very big. It’s creative. SoFi. 5 things to know about the house of Super Bowl LVI – Orange County Register

If there’s one thing SoFi Stadium doesn’t have, it’s a hidden gem.

It seems every moment in SoFi’s history hits the headlines and captivates Southland:

Rams owner Stan Kroenke announced, in January 2015, that he plans to build a football stadium in Inglewood – finally brought his team from St. Louis returned to Los Angeles. The first earth shovels were dug up. Build step by step. Delays caused by coronavirus.

Its final dedication, in September 2020, is LA’s newest sports sanctuary. The The stadium’s first match with the fanspeople walk inside, horrified, as if SoFi were LA’s Sistine Chapel, devoid of frescoes.

And now, on Sunday, February 13, SoFi will take center stage in the footballing universe as the Cincinnati Bengals take on the Rams in Super Bowl LVI.

As such, very little is known about the $5.5 billion stadium.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to surprise you. So here are five tidbits about the LA region’s flashiest gems.

Move the Earth

The construction of a mammoth stadium on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack posed a problem: Location near Los Angeles International Airport.

It cannot be so high that it could interfere with the radar or flight path of the LAX. So part of the stadium is underground.

That’s why the pitch is actually about 100 meters below the ground.

But to do that, construction crews have to move the Earth – or at least a large part of it.

According to the fact sheet provided by HKS Architects, which designed the stadium, a total of more than 7 million cubic meters of soil needed to be excavated.

Now, just because that’s a fraction of the 170 million cubic yards removed for the Panama Canal – about 4% – don’t think of it as a small amount: SoFi-excavated Earth will fill at least 430,000 vehicles standard dump load.

Of course, moving soil isn’t the only challenge when digging a 200-foot hole. Weather can also be an issue – and that’s exactly what happened during the winter of 2016-17.

More-than-normal rainfall soaked Southland, turning the SoFi excavation site into a small lake. That construction delay about 60 daysso teams can dredge it.

That, in the end, was just a minor glitch. Construction progress. And, on September 8, 2020, SoFi Stadium finally opened its doors.

A decade in the making

However, SoFi’s origin story doesn’t begin with the 2016 excavation.

Instead, it started in 2006, with the silliest government initiatives: community workshop.

Those workshops – listening to what residents, business owners and other stakeholders wanted from a new development – ​​informed the original Hollywood Park Specific Plan.

The plan requires an environmental analysis and some adjustments before the City Council can pass it, which the panel did in June 2009.

However, it was a bit of a bad time. The country was mired in the Great Depression.

Progress is moderate as the economy recovers. But in the end, a series of bureaucratic steps in 2013 and 2014 paved the way for construction. Work on developing Hollywood Parks began in 2014.

That development will soon bring hundreds of housing units, thousands of square feet of retail space and acres of parkland (more on that later). But as of 2014, the development has yet to include a football stadium. plan.

That started to change in 2014, when Kroenke bought 60 acres of land next to the Hollywood Park development. Rumors began to fly.

And then, in 2015, the rumors were confirmed: Kroenke will build a stadium and try to reposition the Rams.

An icon going down

However, the development project is more than just a building frenzy.

The crew also had to take down several structures.

And one of those structures is the symbol of Los Angeles.

For residents of a certain age, the phrase “Hollywood Park” does not refer to football stadiums and apartment complexes – but to a race track and grandstand.

The Hollywood Park track had nearly 77 years of history before it opened in May 2015. Mayor James Butts even said the stands is “part of Inglewood history.”

However, he said so on the day the stand was demolished.

However, it was definitely a sight.

Most recent demolition projects in the area are more methodical: Old demolition San Pedro CourtFor example, started earlier this week and will take at least a month to complete – although an excavator spent Wednesday morning slamming into brick and steel.

Currently no longer exists Gerald Desmond Bridgein Bai Dai, it will take until 2024 to be completely dismantled, with Bai Dai Port planning to recycle the material.

In contrast, the Hollywood Park grandstand looks like something out of 1990s Las Vegas.

Like 1996’s The Sands, the grandstand in Hollywood Park collapsed in seconds – due to the explosion.

The Sands paved the way for The Venetian. The stands make way for SoFi Stadium.

As the stands turned to rubble and dust, fans chanted, “LA Rams.”

Five years later, SoFi opened its doors.

A TV bigger than your house

SoFi’s architectural and technological wonders are innumerable.

But the Infinity Display hovering over the field might be the best.

Samsung-made SoFi video hangers make most jumbotrons look like old tube televisions.

It weighs 2.2 million pounds and is the only sports video board that measures 4k from start to finish, according to the HKS Architects fact sheet. Its largest panel is four stories high. It boasts 260 speakers and 70,000 square feet of digital LED lights.

However, none of that matches the scale of the Infinity Display.

Consider this instead: The playing field below is 100 yards. Videoboard is 120 yards.

That’s right, the screen is longer than the field – and 1.5 times wider.

So it is a good thing that the screen does not broadcast the match live. If it had happened, people might not have spent any time looking at the actual scene.

A city of its own

If you like your entertainment options to be oversized, then step outside of SoFi and take a look at the surrounding area.

The Rams are just one part of a master plan to redevelop Hollywood Park.

Phase 1 looks set to be completed by next year’s College Soccer National Championship, which SoFi will host. That means the stadium will be surrounded by 500,000 square feet of retail and 314 residences, among other infrastructure.

And by the time the project is completed, around 2025, Hollywood Park would be proud 2,500 residences, a hotel, an 890,000 square foot retail space and more than 25 acres of parks and open space.

The developers have called the project a “city within a city”.