Major League Soccer expansion franchise Inter Miami has successfully fitted the first roof structure at Lockhart Stadium, which will serve as the club’s temporary home when it enters the competition next year.
The reconstructed venue is being built on the current site of Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale. Ahead of Inter Miami’s MLS debut in March next year, a team of more than 200 on-site construction professionals hit a milestone with the installation of the first part of the venue’s roof.
The installation comes after the stadium recently went vertical with steel columns, before parts of the secondary frame of the metal building and the horizontal structural members were fitted.
The stadium will have a capacity of 18,000 and will serve as Inter Miami’s home while a permanent new stadium is built on the Freedom Park site in Miami. The Fort Lauderdale stadium will continue to house Inter Miami’s USL League One team once the club moves into its permanent home.
The current plan envisions Inter Miami playing at a redeveloped Lockhart Stadium for the 2020 and 2021 MLS seasons until the Freedom Park stadium opens.
Lockhart Stadium’s grass is expected to be installed by mid-November. Inter Miami said the on-site training complex is also taking shape, with the 50,000-square-foot building currently undergoing steel, concrete and roofing installations.
Last month, MLS commissioner Don Garber locked horns with Miami authorities over the process surrounding the delivery of the 25,000-seat Freedom Park stadium. Garber spoke out amid ongoing unease over securing a stadium for a franchise that was initially formed in 2014, before being ratified in January 2018.
Image: Inter Miami
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