Globe Life Field Construction Update with Rob Matwick

Rob Matwick, Texas Rangers VP of Business Operations, addresses the media with updates on the construction of Globe Life Field.

Transcript

00:00 Morning everybody, welcome back to Globe Light Field and literally Globe Light Field, on the field.

00:05 Well what will become the field by the end of this month. So as you can see we've got all of our

00:10 concrete poured for the base. You look along the cutouts here of the infield the clay is actually

00:15 in and protected underneath that protective covering. You see the warning track material

00:21 going in around the edges of the field. So by the end of February the playing surface will be in

00:27 prior to the Chris Stapleton show. I think the plan for the playing surface itself is to have

00:32 about 75 percent of the fill material actually in place prior to the concert. Put the concert

00:39 surface down, the protective surface, play the show, get it back up and then do the last 25

00:44 percent prior to the March 23rd exhibition game. So just looking at the building top to bottom as

00:49 you can see over my right shoulder directly above our heads here we've got about seven panels of the

00:54 ETFE material in the center section of the roof to go in. The north and south the solid surface

01:01 and the PVC membrane on top is actually complete. If you look and it's maybe a little hard to tell

01:07 on the end of the retractable roof you can see where we've got a solid area and it's open in the

01:14 center. We're actually putting the bulb seal in place on the east side eventually it'll go over

01:19 on the west side too which will help us to seal the roof when it's completely done. I can point

01:24 that out later if it's a little hard to understand right now but that work has started. Lights are

01:30 on so we've got two of the four banks of the sports lights that are working. All the lights are

01:35 actually in. We're just in the process now on the east and on the south and doing the final

01:41 electrical connections. On the seating side as you can see we've got about 30,000 of the 40,300

01:47 seats that are actually in place so that work continues here. We have a little bit of a traffic

01:51 coating to finish on the lower level but seats will be going in soon. And then during the month

01:56 of February we're anticipating deliveries of about 7,500 pieces of loose furniture. So that

02:03 furniture will go into finished suites, it'll go into finished club areas, there will be loose

02:08 furniture on concourses. So over the next four to six weeks we'll be accepting all that furniture

02:13 and putting it into place which will finish a lot of the areas here. You see section signs starting

02:19 to go in, handrails. So these are some of the last elements that we typically have in a job like this.

02:23 Also working on IT infrastructure, scoreboard control room. We'll actually start to fire up

02:30 scoreboards next week, maybe this week actually. Left field will be first, center field second,

02:35 and then within the next two weeks we'll actually have the right field scoreboard and the ribbon

02:39 panels actually operating and testing. So lots of work to be done. We have probably 1,500-1,600

02:46 workers on site every day, sometimes flexing up to 1,800 in some combination of 16 to 24-hour

02:53 shifts as needed depending on where the trains are. So as you can tell still a lot of activity

02:59 but significant progress every day. Well the question was how confident are we that

03:06 we'll be done by opening day. I'm fully confident by opening day. I mean you know it's you see the

03:13 activity now you know remember we're February 5th you know the first baseball game is March 23.

03:18 An interesting thing about this project and I've said it other times you know I'll come in in the

03:24 morning and we will see you know one condition. I may go out two hours later and something has

03:30 changed. We're making progress that quickly. Our food and beverage partners in Delaware North have

03:34 been in the buildings since January 2nd. So they're already working their commissaries and

03:39 commissioning equipment bringing it online preparing to cook. Ranger staff will move in

03:44 at the end of February. We'll move into the office tower over here on the south side.

03:47 Our IT group is actually already in the space placing monitors and phones and so you know we'll

03:53 be moving in here in a few weeks and you know we're pressing forward. We'll get done.