Stadium contracts are piling up faster than most builders can staff them. Between mid-June and mid-September, owners handed out six major stadium and arena construction contracts worth roughly $11 billion combined, according to a roundup Construction Dive published Sept. 30. Mortenson is on three of them.
The deal flow has now reached the design side. On Sept. 29, civil engineering firm McAdams said it had acquired Sports Design Group, a McKinney, Texas, practice that designs athletic fields and venues.
Six stadium contracts, one recurring name
The list runs from a $282 million arena refresh to a $3.8 billion NFL stadium:
- Washington Commanders stadium, about $3.8 billion: Clark Construction and Mortenson in a joint venture, awarded Aug. 11.
- Tampa Bay Rays ballpark, $2.3 billion: an AECOM Hunt and Turner joint venture, Aug. 18. City and county financing votes were still pending.
- Kansas City Royals ballpark, $1.9 billion: Mortenson and McCownGordon Construction as CM at risk, Sept. 15.
- University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, $1.45 billion: Manhattan Construction and AECOM Hunt, June 16.
- San Antonio Spurs arena, $1.3 billion: Mortenson and Bartlett Cocke, Aug. 26.
- Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C., $282 million: Turner, July 6.
Mortenson’s share is the story inside the story. It’s carrying a piece of roughly $7 billion in new venue work, and all three are joint ventures. That’s how a national sports builder adds capacity without adding headcount at the same pace. It also means the hometown partners on these teams, McCownGordon in Kansas City and Bartlett Cocke in San Antonio, are taking on some of the largest jobs in their histories.
Exchange covered several of these awards as they landed, including the Royals ballpark CM-at-risk pick and the Rays selection that came before the money was voted.
Why an engineering firm bought a sports design shop
Sports Design Group was founded in 2006 by landscape architect Richard McDonald. McAdams says the practice has worked on about 250 synthetic turf fields and 125 natural grass fields, and its portfolio includes work tied to the Dallas Cowboys training facility, Lambeau Field, Notre Dame Stadium and the Minnesota Twins’ ballpark. Most of its volume is Texas school districts: Mansfield, Grapevine-Colleyville, Hays and San Antonio ISDs among them.
“Athletic facility design is incredibly specialized,” McAdams CEO Mike Munn said in the announcement. McDonald joins as senior advisor for sports. Terms weren’t disclosed. Morrissey Goodale advised McAdams.
The logic is straightforward. McAdams already does site civil, land planning and landscape architecture across the Carolinas, Florida and Texas. Field design is a small slice of a stadium budget but a stubborn one: drainage, subgrade, turf systems and irrigation have to work from the first game. Owning that expertise lets a civil firm sell the whole site package instead of subbing it out.
What could slow the sports venue boom
Awards aren’t starts. The Rays contract was let before public financing was approved, and several of these venues depend on bond deals, tax districts or legislative votes that can move. Labor is the other constraint. Over the next few years, six venue jobs of this size will draw on the same pool of superintendents, steel erectors and MEP crews that data center owners are already bidding up.
Specialists are getting bought now because they’re cheaper than a schedule slip later.