Dive Brief:
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Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. has been selected to take over construction of the troubled $71 million Dunkin' Donuts Park baseball stadium in Hartford, CT, according to the Hartford Courant.
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The city, which is funding the ballpark, fired the original development team after construction delays and alleged inferior workmanship resulted its Minor League Baseball club, the Hartford Yard Goats, having to spend last season on the road. The project is now being administered by surety bonding company Arch Insurance.
- Centerplan Construction Co. and DoNo Hartford sued the city for wrongful termination and filed for an injunction to stop officials from replacing them with another contractor. The two sides are currently in court-ordered mediation.
Dive Insight:
Arch said Whiting-Turner has experience building sports facilities and that construction, which is scheduled to resume on the ballpark the week of Oct. 3, should be complete in time for the Yard Goats' second Eastern League season, starting April 2017. This goal is particularly challenging since there have been no construction workers at the stadium for the last four months. In the meantime, league officials have threatened to move the franchise elsewhere if the project is not finished in time for the home opener.
Whiting-Turner was ranked among the top 10 contractors in the Engineering News Record's 2016 Top 400 Contractors list, reporting an estimated annual revenue of approximately $6 billion. The company counts the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, in Annapolis, MD; the Giant Center, in Hershey, PA; and the M&T Bank Stadium, in Baltimore, among its sports-related projects.
Sports stadiums often mean big money to host cities, teams and developers, and significant delays in the schedule can play havoc with intricate financing arrangements and professional league schedules. The Atlanta Falcons struggled earlier this year to maintain the construction schedule on the $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, reportedly due to design challenges posed by the eight-piece retractable roof. This summer, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that general contractor Holder Hunt Russell Moody had presented the team with about $9 million in change orders, costs related to the schedule acceleration necessary for the project to be complete in time for the 2017-2018 NFL season.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mortenson Construction handed over the keys to the $1.1 billion Minnesota Vikings U.S. Bank Stadium six weeks ahead of schedule. This was despite the death of a worker who fell from the roof last summer, an ongoing fight with bird advocates who insisted that the building's full-height glass curtainwall and transparent ETFE roof would confuse migratory birds as well as a squabble over change orders with the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority.