Charlotte 49ers unveil renderings of expanded football stadium. ‘A dream for many’
The Charlotte 49ers’ football home is getting an upgrade.
Charlotte unveiled renderings of its planned renovations to Jerry Richardson Stadium Thursday afternoon. The venue is adding an upper deck, which will feature a variety of both premium and general admission seating options, set to enhance fan experience at the growing university.
Its brick exterior will blend in with the campus’ buildings, and then the advent of grandstands above the lower bowl will finally give the Niners their big-time football stadium.
The expansion will increase capacity at the stadium from 15,314 to roughly 18,100, which is subject to change. Charlotte is averaging 15,425 per game this season.
The 49ers will still play their next two seasons amid construction inside the existing stadium, and the expanded version should be ready before the 2027 season.
“This is a residential campus — it’s beautiful, it’s connected to the city — and I can remember, as many of us can who have been tied to this city in some way, when this was a small commuter college,” Charlotte athletic director Mike Hill said in an interview. “That’s what it was, and it served its purpose. And now it’s really blossoming into something that was a dream for many.”
Features of the new upper deck
There will be club seats — featuring access to the suite pictured above — in the middle of the upper deck.
A “ledge seating” option will be in the sections on both sides of the club seats. Those ledge seats will have a table-top, like a bar, in front of them. Loge boxes, premium four-seat cubes, with amenities will also be atop this new monstrosity.
Seven suites, in addition to the university box, will be all the way at the top of the upper deck. A standing-room-only patio club, which will have some seating but be more of a sports bar-like atmosphere, will also be on the upper deck.
The sections on the far sides of the new upper deck? Those will be considered general public seating, which will include both season and single-game tickets.
A growing Niner presence in uptown Charlotte
Charlotte, which will announce its full sales plan in early 2025, plans to open a sales center in uptown.
The athletic department will be leasing space in the facility across the street from the DuBois Center in the UNC Charlotte co-lab, an incubator building that was opened for entrepreneurship and innovation last year.
Furniture will be set up to give fans a true feel for the club seats, and monitors will display fly-throughs to tell the university’s story. This new presence in uptown could help woo corporate clients and even potential new fans as they hope to broaden the 49ers’ reach within their community.
“There’s just a ton of synergy there for us,” Hill said. “There’s event space in that building as well. We might have a viewing party for a game down there. Maybe it’s a road football game viewing party, cocktail party, tailgate-type event — and then, let’s check out these suites and premium areas right down the hallway, and what will be available at the stadium on campus.”
‘Another big step’ in the growth of Charlotte football
Ground will break next summer, likely in August, as the plan is for it to precede the start of the 2025 football season.
It’ll simply be a “pardon our dust” situation, as Hill put it, and most fan entrances will remain unchanged. While there are expected to be some temporary roadblocks — the central Gate 2 will not be accessible, for instance — they are all minor inconveniences.
Charlotte will still operate at capacity throughout the two-year construction. Navigating the stadium through some different entry points and walkways should be the only disruptions to the typical experience on game days over the next two seasons.
“It’s another big step,” Hill said. “To make the move to the premier Group of Five league in the country — the American — to have, at one point we had four straight games on national television. We’re having standing room only crowds. We had that phenomenal home victory over ECU in front of a (standing room only) crowd three rows deep.
“Those are all growth steps. This is another important one for us, because you have to have the facility to be able to not just generate the revenue, but also to provide the fan experience that you want to accommodate for your customer base.”
More renderings and details are expected to be released in early 2025.
