Des Moines won’t see a new downtown football stadium until at least 2025, a year after the team owner predicted.
The Iowa Soccer Development Foundation announced in a press release Monday that it was delaying construction due to the rising cost of building materials. The group also said procuring and shipping materials was taking longer than expected.
Kyle Krause, owner and CEO of the team and president of the Krause Group, owner of the Kum & Go gas station chain, previously told the Des Moines Register that he wanted the stadium to be completed by the summer. 2024.
“A 2025 opening date is more reasonable,” Iowa Soccer Development Foundation Secretary Charley Campbell said in a statement Monday.
Krause, owner of the Des Moines Menace soccer team and Italian club Parma, announced plans for the downtown stadium in September 2019. The Iowa Economic Development Authority pre-granted 23, $5 million to the project last summer, and Krause expects another $30 million in private donations. . Des Moines officials said they are also negotiating an agreement with Krause to provide municipal funding for the project.
The United Soccer League awarded Krause a USL Championship franchise in January, giving the city a second-tier team in American football, just below Major League Soccer. The Menace plays in the fourth level.
USL officials require franchises to have modern, dedicated stadiums. The Krause Group projected the stadium to cost $75 million, according to documents submitted to IEDA in spring 2021 and February. The price has remained the same, although the costs of materials like steel and wood have already increased.
Krause Group spokeswoman Cait Suttie told the Register in March that the developers would be making changes to the stadium to stay in line with the project’s original budget.
“Input costs are higher and the budget is a fixed amount,” she said at the time. “So some design things will have to change.”
On Monday, however, the nonprofit which raises funds for the stadium said it had to push back the construction schedule to preserve “the integrity of the facilities and the visitor experience”.
The stadium is part of a larger redevelopment south of the city centre. The Krause Group plans to build a square, a concert hall, shops, restaurants, breweries, hotels, apartments, offices and a Kum & Go. The Krause Group told city officials that it would spend $550 million on the buildings.
The foundation, which accepts donations for the stadium, also blamed the delay on the process of cleaning up the former Superfund site on which it will be built.
The site is south of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway on the east bank of the Raccoon River, the former home of a DICO tire factory. Environmental regulators discovered it was contaminated with dangerous chemicals, including trichlorethylene, or TCE, which has been linked to cancer, and the site sat empty for about 25 years until the city took over. control in a 2020 regulation.
Workers from the US Environmental Protection Agency, along with city contractors, demolished the old DICO buildings last year. Des Moines has completed its portion of the cleanup, while EPA workers are still treating a pond on the southern portion of the property.
Des Moines Deputy City Manager Matt Anderson said the EPA will finish cleaning up the water by the end of June. He said the Krause Group, which in addition to Kum & Go owns the Krause+ development company, will need to do some additional cleanup.
He said the EPA put a cap of clay or asphalt on the ground to prevent soil contaminants from seeping through. To build the stadium, the Krause group will break the ceiling in certain places.
Some parts of the territory are “hot spots” with a high concentration of contaminants. Developers will need to do additional work in these areas before building. Or, says Anderson, they may try to avoid those places.
He said the Krause Group hired geotechnical engineers to survey the ground and determine where these hot spots were. He will then decide on the precise locations for each part of the development.
“We have a general idea,” Anderson said. “But not to the point where we’re going to plant every tree.”
He added: “As soon as you put a spade in the ground, you have to have a plan.”
Spokespersons for the Krause Group and the Iowa Economic Development Authority were not immediately available for comment on Monday. A USL spokesperson did not immediately return an email from the register.
Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at [email protected], 515-284-8215, or on Twitter at @LetsJett.