Removal of Track at Memorial Stadium Underway
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Work began Wednesday morning on a project to remove the track from KU’s Memorial Stadium. After delivering all of the equipment needed to demolish and remove the track on Tuesday evening, workers got busy in the early morning hours Wednesday with the actual digging up of the track.
Following the removal of the track, workers will surround the field with new artificial turf, which will extend 37 feet from the sidelines. Additional turf in the north end zone will extend 80 feet from the back of the end zone, some 25 feet more than exists today. Ten feet of asphalt will extend from the end of the turf to the stands on the north, east and west sides of the stadium.
The south end zone will remain largely unchanged, except that a new decorative fence will replace the 10-foot chain-link fence that currently stands in that end zone.
The project is expected to take approximately six weeks to complete.
Recognized as the first stadium built on a college campus west of the Mississippi River, Memorial Stadium is the seventh oldest collegiate stadium in the nation; it has a capacity of 50,071. The Jayhawks moved into Memorial Stadium in 1921. The stadium is dedicated to the University of Kansas students who fought and died in World War I.
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