Metrodome repair update

Jerry Stangel is an ironworker from Rockford, Minn. He is a longtime Vikings fan and one of thirty-seven local ironworkers laboring to replace the Metrodome roof in downtown Minneapolis.

“I am excited to be here, I like to go to games and I don’t want the Vikes to go anywhere else but Minnesota,” he said Wednesday.

The Vikings' home since 1982, the Metrodome’s roof collapsed last December thanks to the weight of heavy, wet snow. Work to replace the entire roof has been ongoing since March, with only a few days lost to heat, wind and rain. 

Stangel and his partner work 10-hour days high atop the Dome’s turf on a mobile man lift unit removing the old roof fabric and installing the new panels one by one. There are 106 panels in all, about 10 acres of fabric and only about 15 more to be installed. There are various shapes to the panels and some take a matter of hours to put up, but others can take up to four days each.

Steve Maki is the director of facilities and engineering for the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission. It is his job to supervise the roof repair project daily.

“We have just over 80 percent of the roof fabric that has been put in place,” Maki says. “So we are getting down to the last stages of the project prior to inflation. We would anticipate the inflation of the roof to come in the later part of July.”

New York’s Birdair is the fabricator and installer contractor on the project. It’s a company out of Buffalo, N.Y., and the original installer of the Dome’s roof in the early 1980s.

The new roof will be an improvement to its predecessor. It is made of a stronger, more durable Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric.

“We have seen some great improvements in this new roof and its ability to perform under snow and wind,” Maki said. 

It is the same fabric used on the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., the Denver Airport and the Vancouver Convention Center. Besides a slightly lower-sitting roof on the Dome, one other noticeable change will be seen inside the building.

“Panels of fabric banners will hang vertically off the cable lines over the center of the field,” Maki said. “They will be something that fans will notice. It is all for acoustics, they will make the space better for sound.”

Besides one upper-deck handrail, nothing other than the fabric was damaged in the collapse. The cables are fine, the speakers survived and the light panels are all in working order. Even the turf below three layers of plywood can be used.

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