The people behind the project and the pro soccer team said we should expect construction to start in early summer, and it’s the first full day of summer…….
Hi, everyone!
Remember back at the very end of May when I went out and took pictures of the proposed USL soccer stadium site just adjacent to the Marquette University campus? I did that because the people building the stadium and running the soccer franchise said back in February that the start of construction could be expected in “early summer.” My point was that by some definition, riiiiight before the beginning of June could be described as the very earliest part of summer, and so it was important to go see what the site looked like at the time.
Friday was the summer solstice, with the official down to the minute calendar start of summer coming in the evening hours of June 20th. That made Saturday, June 21st, the first full day of summer.
Seems like a nice time to go out and check in on the stadium site, huh? It’s definitely early summer when it’s the first full day, right?
Here’s what the site looked like on May 31, 2025, as I faced southwest from James Lovell Street:
Anonymous Eagle
And here’s what it looked like at the exact same spot on Saturday, June 21, 2025:
Anonymous Eagle
Here’s what the site looked like facing southeast at James Lovell Street on May 31:
Anonymous Eagle
And the same view on June 21, 2025.
Anonymous Eagle
Yes, I had the zoom set slightly differently in the two, but that’s because I was only going to take the two pictures this time. You’re getting a full view of the site from that spot, easily seeing the office building on the west as well as the dirt pile and the now-former Marquette behavioral clinic on the east.
If you can see those things, you can see that other than lighting, clouds, and cars in the area, nothing has changed in the past three weeks. I did not expect anything to change, but since it is now officially as early in summer as you can be and there’s nothing going on, that’s probably a bad sign for the USL soccer stadium getting started any time soon.
Back in February, the stadium people figured that they could get the construction done in 12 to 14 months. The thought was, seeing as they are as of this moment still planning to start playing soccer in the 2026 season, that USL could schedule them a few road contests in case there was a conflict or things ran late. As things stand right now in the USL Championship, the fewest number of matches played is 11. I don’t think USL is going to let them play 11 straight road matches, much less 14 to match the most played so far, not when the entire season is 34. In theory, that’s 17 home and 17 road, and playing all 17 road contests to start with seems like a bad plan.
If construction starts on Monday and takes 14 months? That would take us to mid-August 2026. Indy Eleven is the USL team that has just 11 matches played in the USL Championship at this point of the 2025 season, and as of August 21, 2025, Indy Eleven is scheduled to have just 11 matches remaining in the 2025 season. In other words, the most forgiving reading of a USL schedule tells us that if it takes 14 months to build this stadium, it’s going to be impossible for the Milwaukee team to start their season with all their road games.
In my eyes? It’s officially time for the franchise organizers to announce that this team is not playing in 2026. As for how this affects Marquette soccer and lacrosse, who are expected to play their home games in this still-theoretical stadium? I can’t see any way that we see a MU event in there until the fall 2027 soccer campaign at the earliest, and that’s presuming that this stadium is definitely getting built….. and I definitely do not believe that right now. With that in mind, it’s probably best if the PA introduction to Valley Fields for soccer this fall just kind of drops the discussion of the future stadium that we heard last season, at least until there’s at least one shovel in the ground.
Swinging back in 10 days for a July 1 update seems a little pointless right now, so perhaps we’ll let this ride out until August 1st. That’s definitely past “early summer” no matter how you slice it.
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