EVANSTON, Ill. — Weeks before kickoff, Northwestern football’s temporary stadium remained a work in progress.
The final bleachers were being added to the 62-row north grandstand. Scaffolding along the west sideline set the base for what soon will be the scoreboard. The south stands are the main attraction, home to the stadium’s club-level seating with a view along the Lake Michigan waterfront that stretches to downtown Chicago and overlooks the soon-to-be beer garden, yet another aspect of this built-from-the-ground home that will be different than Ryan Field (the former stadium prohibited alcohol sales).
Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium — the official name as of last week — remains an active construction site. Work began this summer to transform Northwestern’s soccer/lacrosse stadium into a 15,000-seat Big Ten football stadium, which will serve as the Wildcats’ home for the next two seasons during Ryan Field’s $800 million rebuild.
At the end of the 2023 season, Northwestern didn’t know where it would play in 2024. Talks of home games at off-campus sites were met with skepticism. And when the on-campus-stadium plan finally was announced in April, the conversation shifted to whether a big drop in capacity (the old Ryan Field housed 47,130) was too big of a risk.
“Projects like this on university campuses don’t happen in a silo,” deputy AD and assistant vice president of development Jesse Marks said. “It’s a very tight timeframe in a tight footprint.”
The timeframe? Sixty-five days, to be exact. That prompts the question: How does a school build a stadium in 65 days?
“Grit and tenacity,” Marks answered. “And believing that it can get done. We’ve been operating like a Formula 1 race car to make this happen.”
Marks was a strong advocate for the temporary stadium project particularly because it would keep Northwestern home games on campus.
As a Miami graduate, Marks previously worked as the Hurricanes’ senior associate athletic director for development. Miami plays football at Hard Rock Stadium, about 30 minutes away from campus, and Marks saw the challenges that created for players and fans.
As Northwestern explored venues around Chicago, the distance problem usually was met with a scheduling quirk. The city’s two Major League Baseball stadiums, Guaranteed Rate Field and Wrigley Field, wouldn’t be available until November. Soldier Field, the home of the Chicago Bears, has limited availability. The Chicago Fire of the MLS play at Soldier Field and were forced to reschedule two home matches this year due to a policy prohibiting the Fire from hosting matches within five days of a Bears home game. SeatGeek Stadium, the Fire’s former home, had the availability and capacity (28,000) but presented the least desirable commute — a 30-mile trek through the heart of Chicago traffic.
“We could have played games there. There’s no doubt about that,” Marks said. “But in reality, our student-athletes, it would be three hours before they got back to campus and could hang out with their parents and have a great experience.”
Meanwhile, Northwestern is still recovering from a hazing scandal that resulted in the firing of former coach Pat Fitzgerald one year ago. Fan engagement amid the turmoil is a priority, especially as the university works behind the scenes on what is estimated to be the most expensive stadium renovation in college football history.
“Coming off some challenging times, we need to grow our season-ticket base and keep those that we have engaged,” Marks said. “We have the best shot at doing that on campus.”
Marks said Northwestern has sold through 90 percent of its season-ticket base and is holding back a portion of tickets to be released game by game. Despite the limited capacity, the university isn’t expecting a loss in ticket revenue, as the temporary field will have significantly more premium seating to fill the gap (season-ticket packages range from $399 to $3,000 per seat).
Marks confirmed a six-figure commitment from the family of coach David Braun to help fund the construction of the temporary field, “and there were multiple other donors who did the same thing,” he said.
The temporary stadium is across the street from the Walter Athletics Center, which will provide the needed locker-room space and facilities for game-day operations. The biggest criticism has been the size of the stadium — which trails the next-smallest Big Ten stadium by 35,850 (Minnesota’s Huntington Bank Stadium) and is more on par with the largest high school football stadium in Illinois (Rock Island Public School Stadium’s capacity seats just more than 15,000).
But the intimate feel isn’t necessarily new for Northwestern, which already had the smallest stadium in the Big Ten, and it’s especially not new for Braun. As Braun saw at coaching stops in Division II and the FCS, venues with limited capacity can produce the right game-day experience “with the right attitude of the fan base and the right product on the field,” Braun said. The first glimpse into that stadium environment will come Aug. 31 against Miami (OH) before an 8 p.m. matchup against Duke in Week 2.
“I think it’s this incredible mix of Big Ten football, Friday night lights for our Duke game and a little bit of high school feel to it,” Braun said.
Lake-effect wind and temperatures will impact play at the temporary field, too. With no more than 50 feet between the back of the west bleachers and the lakefront, a stray kick landing in Lake Michigan is not out of the question (it would be retrieved). Braun said the team — particularly the special teams unit — will familiarize itself with the lake-effect conditions and hopes to use it as an added home-field advantage.
“It’s no different than playing at Ryan Field. It’s Big Ten football in the fall,” Marks said. “Yeah, if there’s wind it will affect the kicking game and the passing game, but both teams have to handle it.”
The last game Northwestern will host at its temporary facility this season is on Oct. 19 against Wisconsin before moving to Wrigley Field to play Ohio State and Illinois in November. The move will alleviate some of the lake-effect weather conditions that peak in the colder months, but what about the chance that Northwestern hosts a College Football Playoff game in December 2024 or 2025? A spokesperson said it wouldn’t be played at the temporary stadium or Wrigley Field but declined to share a specific location.
The stadium’s work-in-progress status will remain beyond the games the football team will play there in 2024. Marks said stadium enhancements will be done for 2025, including the possibility of adding more sideline seating — the part of the stadium that lacks the most space.
A mock game is scheduled the week before the season opener in which players will walk through locker-room transitions and a game-day agenda to make the place feel more like home.
Displacing a football team for two seasons can be scary. The project has forced the football team to adapt and has required a level of trust from players and recruits to understand the ultimate vision. But as Braun said, what makes the stadium unique is that “it’s ours.”
“It fits Northwestern,” Braun said, “and I think that’s what’s so cool about it.
“I would challenge anyone in the country to get a bunch of people together to be this creative to pull something off like this. Honestly, I think it’s only something that could be pulled off by a place like Northwestern.”
(Top photo: Jayna Bardahl / The Athletic)