Construction Underway on IWU Football Stadium
(rendering provided by IWU)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOfficials at Indiana Wesleyan University have broken ground on the stadium that will eventually house the state’s next college football program. The venue will be located next to the IWU track and field facility and plans call for the finished product to hold around 4,000 fans. Construction is expected to be complete before the Wildcats take the field for the first time in 2018.
Features of the stadium include 2,500 seats and a berm on the outer edges of the artificial turf field.
Director of Athletics Mark DeMichael says "we are pleased that the football stadium site and initial design concept have been approved. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with John Jones, Don Rowley, and our outstanding Operations team in the development of the stadium concept. Our goal from the beginning has been for the football facility to reflect the excellence that people have come to expect from IWU. We feel confident that this design accomplishes that goal and that our entire Grant County community will be proud of this new addition to our athletic facilities."
The first stage of the project, a 17,000 square-foot support building, is expected to be complete in a year. It will include locker room, weight room and training areas which IWU says will be used by all Wildcat athletics teams.
Fort Wayne-based Design Collaborative handled architecture work, while Weigand Construction, also of Fort Wayne, will build the facilities.
The school announced in April it was launching a football program. At the time, officials pegged the total cost of startup somewhere between $12 million and $15 million, which included some $6 million to $9 million for the stadium.