MINNEAPOLIS - You may be seeing it going up from the outside, but on Wednesday, KARE 11 cameras were invited inside the construction of the new Vikings stadium. It is now 50 percent complete.
About $400 million dollars of work is already done.
Although it doesn't quite look like a football field yet, there are ways it's already better than the Metrodome, such as the view from the concourses.
"So you can actually be on the concourse and look out, and if something exciting happens, you can still see down to the field," said Dave Mansell, General Superintendent for Mortenson Construction.
That "openness" is the favorite part for owner Mark Wilf.
"It's going to be an indoor building, but people are really going to get a sense of just a lot of light coming in, a lot of openness," Wilf said.
Construction has reached the half-way point. Eighty percent of the concrete has been poured -- that's 80 thousand cubic yards.
You can see where the seats soon will be.
The spot for the scoreboard is ready.
And several precautions are being taken to prevent a repeat of snow tearing through the roof of the Metrodome and onto the field.
"It's a lot more sophisticated than the Metrodome," Mansell said.
Snow is expected to hit that black deflector on the peak, slide down 65-foot wide gutters, before it's melted and fed into storm sewers.
Speaking of that roof, the structural part of it is almost complete. Just the final roof beam needs to be set in place, then the cranes and supports inside can be removed.
And they have to be accurate. What's the margin of error?
"I don't know, a half inch?," Mansell said.
That's not much when you're talking a thousand foot beam.
They want the roof installed by November and are still on track to finish the stadium by July 2016.
