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Stadium Watch Blog
Tim Nelson

The dirt on the new Vikings stadium

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Here's what the excavation looks like outside the Metrodome this morning.

The Strib's Paul Levy says Blaine is finally getting a piece of the Vikings stadium action, seven years after the team jilted Anoka County officials trying to lure the team out of Minneapolis.

Levy says the city will be taking 350,000 yards of fill from the Metrodome site, being trucked away by night as construction proceeds on the new Vikings stadium.

Writes Levy: “It’s clean fill,” said Bryan Schafer, the city’s community development director. “The team hasn't always been very good, but the fill’s good,” he said jokingly.

The site will eventually host a new Allina development.

Blaine isn't the only place the dirt is going, though.

The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority said last week that the Vikings owners are going to take a pile of it, too, at least temporarily. The MSFA said it was paying $60,000 to team owners to store fill on a vacant lot across 4th Street from the Metrodome while construction is under way.

"There's a great deal of work taking the dirt and fill in the back of the lot," executive director Ted Mondale told the MSFA board. "That dirt, some has to go to a regulated landfill. Some can be stored and brought back onto the project, which is a significant savings to the project. We worked out a lease with the property next door. The lease is for the amount for the amount of half of their parking revenue and that portion of their property taxes. It saves significant dollars."

Some of the rest is showing up in other projects, which may also be familiar to Minnesotans some day.

Here's what Mortenson Construction's John Wood said last Friday: "We have hauled about 70,00 cubic yards, which is about 100,000 tons of soil from the site. Most of that has fortunately been material that has been able to be reused for other projects, and significant amount of that material has been transported to a couple of (Minnesota Department of Transportation) projects and used for fill."