GAINESVILLE, Ga. — It’s finally here, and it’s really happening.
The scheduled Sept. 20 Grand Reopening of the new-and-improved City Park Stadium is just three days away, and as promised, Gainesville will play its scheduled home opener on time on Friday.
And Director of Maintenance and Operations David Presnell cannot wait to unveil it, though in full disclosure the entire project is still not totally complete and probably won’t be until December.
The main focus of the $13.6 million project centered around updating the press box and adding new seating, as well as reworking the bathrooms and concession stand. It increased seating capacity to roughly 5,500 (home and visitors) with the newly-constructed press box having two working floors with suites and game day operations.
They had set a hard deadline on the Red Elephants’ Sept. 20 game against Lanier to unveil it fully. They will open the gates as planned.
“The entrance that was done last year as part of Phase 1, underneath the dirt, has already been asphalted, so we're just going to clean all that up, and we're gonna start doing that (Tuesday), get everything back spick and span,” Presnell said. “The grass areas are torn up pretty well. We will just seed and straw them right now because we're still going to have a fair amount of work going on there after Friday.
“The restrooms will be open, and the concession stand will be open. But we're going to be running (the concession stand) on a limited basis, with our other concession stand fully open.”
The Red Elephants have played their first four games of the 2024 season all on the road, traveling a total of 843 miles. They went 3-1, with their only loss coming last week to No. 1-ranked Carrollton.
Presnell acknowledged “there were challenges,” but the project was able to stay on budget.
“The timeline probably got us just a little bit, but budget-wise, we were able to stay within our budget,” he said. “The biggest challenge was just the site itself. It's so compacted there, and then we're building this extremely high press box right in the middle of it. Access to it has been difficult.
“There's been a tremendous amount of work that has gone into this, but it has gone pretty much the way we wanted. We've only had to make a few changes. Everything kind of came together really well. It's going to be top-notch. It's going to be a great asset to the park and to that area.”
The gates will open two hours before the scheduled 7:30 p.m. kickoff.
