The 2-Year Stadium Construction Project: A Peek Behind the Fast Delivery of San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium

By Martin Jones, senior project manager, Bowman

When the National Football League’s San Diego Chargers moved to Los Angeles in 2017, they left behind Qualcomm Stadium. Once the community decided what to do with the site, little time was wasted. Following a local ballot initiative, San Diego State University (SDSU) took ownership of the site in August 2020. The venue opened on time on September 3, 2022. Pretty fast, as stadium projects go.

As site infrastructure design and engineering consultants, Bowman had a significant role in this speedy turnaround.  The project plans, led by architectural firm Gensler, called for a fresh build. Qualcomm Stadium, opened in 1967 as San Diego Stadium, would be demolished. The new Snapdragon Stadium at SDSU Mission Valley would be home to SDSU Aztecs football, San Diego Wave FC of the National Women’s Soccer League and the San Diego Legion of Major League Rugby. To underscore the significance of this moment, the new venue’s big debut would be a nationally televised college football game in September 2022.

There was a logistical challenge, as the old stadium would continue operating while the new one was built immediately next to it. While not uncommon, it doesn’t make a project go any faster.

The project was also meant to address a number of environmental concerns, including periods of severe flooding, as the old stadium was on a floodplain where a creek meets the San Diego River.  New construction created the opportunity to put an end to the flooding issues. It also has the potential to grow to become more than a stadium, with later phases to incorporate mixed-use residential and retail, affordable housing, biking and pedestrian trails, and an innovation district with research, lab, and office space.

Several factors came together to make for rapid construction.  The pandemic, painful as it was, proved to have one silver lining. Qualcomm was demolished far earlier than originally planned. Crews didn’t have to work gingerly around an operational public structure while building a huge structure right next to it.  The quickened timeline sped up the process while also providing developers with a much-needed resource: dirt.

One of the daunting challenges recognized early on was that some 389,000 cubic yards of soil would be needed to raise the site above the floodplain level prior to construction (for reference, a dump truck typically holds about 10 cubic yards of soil). The former stadium sat on what was akin to a large anthill-like structure, with the stadium in a cone at the top. With Qualcomm out of the way, developers wouldn’t have to source their entire infill from afar. They could move it according to the needs on the site. The soil provided by the “anthill” meant only 173,000 cubic yards had to be externally sourced–no small number to be sure, but much more preferable to the total.

Creative use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), tools also helped. The classic use case for BIM concerns architecture, particularly on the inside of a structure. For Snapdragon, consultants applied BIM to the exterior and underground area in an obsessively granular manner. This included the existing underground situation: 4,000 support piles and a “spaghetti” of underground pipe-and-wire infrastructure. The crews knew where everything was. Topside, every light pole, tree, and piece of conduit was accounted for.

Gathering and inputting all this information called for a lot of upfront work. But it paid off later by avoiding unexpected hiccups and snags–which tend to happen when doing things like moving a 48-inch water main. Designers, engineers, and workers had better information at their fingertips without having to dig into the ground first to get it.

Not to be overlooked was the unwavering preparedness of SDSU. University leadership began comprehensive design work early on. When the go-ahead was given via ballot approval, plan development was underway. SDSU took ownership of the site on August 13, 2020. The first shovel went into the ground on August 17.

Within its first year, the $310 million, 35,000 capacity multipurpose venue played host to over 130 events, including international and local sporting events, concerts, festivals, championships, community events, and much more. A 34-acre river park with bioretention basins now makes for a natural buffer zone against flooding.  Natural features and native vegetation create a new destination to what formerly had been one of the largest parking lots west of the Mississippi River. And the city of San Diego retains a great home for sports.

Martin Jones is a senior project manager at Bowman. Jones was the lead project manager for the company’s site infrastructure design and engineering consulting work on the Snapdragon Stadium project.