Industry News

LA Stadium celebrates topping out

Construction workers and NFL team officials have celebrated the ‘topping out’ of the LA Stadium, which will be the new $2.6bn home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

A ceremony took place as the highest steel beam, which will support the Inglewood stadium’s shiny, transparent roof canopy when it is completed in the summer of 2020, was put into place.

More than 2,000 construction workers are employed on the 70,000-capacity stadium, with the final steel beam laid and signed by ironworkers Paul Graham and Victor Tabora.

“The work that this construction team has done is outstanding,” said John Spanos, Chargers’ president of football operations, whose grandfather and Chargers owner Alex Spanos founded construction giant A.G. Spanos Companies almost six decades ago.

The stadium, which is part of the LA Stadium and Entertainment District project at Hollywood Park, is scheduled to hold the Super Bowl in 2022. Officials claim the venue is now 40-per-cent complete.

“It’s incredible,” added Mark Williams, Principal, HKS Architects. “First off, the safety of doing all this is unprecedented. But the next thing is the sheer number of people creating this incredible project.  It’s just thousands and thousands of people every day.

“It’s amazing what it takes to build a building like this.”

IMAGE: Los Angeles Chargers/Mike Nowak / LA Rams