On September 3, 2022, Snapdragon Stadium, the new home to San Diego State University’s (SDSU) football team, as well as the San Diego Wave FC, opened with much fanfare. The SDSU Aztecs hosted the Arizona Wildcats as a crowd of 35,000 kicked off the season and marked the beginning of a new era of growth for SDSU. The stadium is the first completed component of the redevelopment of the old Qualcomm Stadium, the former 135-acre home of the San Diego Chargers. The stadium offers a premium fan experience with local flair. Luxury seating options are available, along with high end amenities and locally inspired concessions.

The project spanned COVID-19 and much of the team’s collaboration mirrored society’s response to the pandemic. When the project began, the design team was regularly meeting in person coordinating each of the disciplines working alongside design build partners and pushing towards final design and into construction. However, as the pandemic began and the ability to meet in person was impacted, everyone was adapting to a new virtual setting. In the moment, there were so many unknowns about how this would affect the project. Typically, the team has grown accustomed to the usual in-person design meetings where designers and stakeholders are all together collaborating and coordinating the design in real time. Because of travel restrictions and social distancing, the team was pushed into new remote working conditions to work to complete the project design in a new environment. Fortunately, as the project moved from design into construction, many of the COVID restrictions eased and the project was able to return to a more standard approach with typical site visits throughout construction.

While the design and construction team certainly experienced new obstacles with the project spanning a global pandemic, the project was still able to move forward without delay and succeed in delivering a top tier facility in record time to SDSU and the city. The success of the project was the result of truly great partners across the entire team.