Rams stadium opening delayed until 2020 due to rain, officials say

Rain delays aren’t just for football games, they’re also for football stadiums. The Rams announced today that the $2.6 billion stadium will open in time for the 2020 football season—almost a year later than originally scheduled.

Officials placed the blame on the heavy rains that fell during a period when “mass excavation” was scheduled to occur, CBS2 reports.

Wet soil meant that work couldn’t proceed on the 3-million-square-foot stadium, so the project’s construction team “experienced significant delays and lost the better part of two months from early January into the beginning of March,” the Rams said in a statement.

“It was a very unforgiving two months for the project. And speaking from a building perspective, it really couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Bob Aylesworth of stadium-builders Turner/AECOM Hunt told the Los Angeles Times.

Courtesy of HKS

Project officials told the Times that the timetable for building the dual-team stadium was already fairly tight. They say pushing back the opening will mean that workers don’t have to rush on stadium interiors.

The delay means that the Rams will play the 2019 season at the Coliseum, and the Chargers will play theirs at the StubHub Center in Carson.

The 70,000-seat Inglewood NFL stadium is scheduled to host the 2021 Super Bowl, so hopefully, there won’t be any future delays.

• Opening Of Inglewood Stadium Pushed Back To 2020; Rains Blamed [CBS2]
• Inglewood football stadium's opening will be delayed a year because of record rainfall [LAT]
• 5 things to know about the massive storm headed to California [Curbed LA]
• 9 wild images of the massive storms pummeling LA [Curbed LA]