Let’s Go Look At The Proposed Soccer Stadium Site

The view facing southwest from the northeast corner of the intersection of North James Lovell Street and West Michigan Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 31, 2025. — Anonymous Eagle

The Milwaukee professional soccer stadium developers said they “hope to begin construction in early summer,” so it seemed like a good idea to take some pictures before June 1st.

Back in February, we documented a slight shift forward in the projected construction for the proposed soccer stadium just southeast of Marquette University’s campus. The stadium is expected to be the home for a USL Championship level team, as well as the future home for Marquette soccer and lacrosse. That shift forward moved the expected timeframe for the start of construction from “early spring” to “early summer.”

Today, as you can see from the timestamp at the top of the page, is May 31st. A not-generous interpretation of “the start of summer” is June 1st, as most people consider June, July, and August to be the summer months even though the chronological season of summer doesn’t start until late in the month.

In any case, if the developers are still planning on an early summer start, it seems like May 31st is a good day to go out and take some pictures of the site to see what it looks like before we touch anything that resembles their last announced expected starting timeframe.

So that’s what I did. I went up to campus, parked on Michigan Street, walked over to the rear of Straz Tower, faced southeast, took a picture, and then started moving east to document the entire site.

The view facing southeast from the south side of Straz Tower at Marquette University on May 31, 2025

On the right, you can see the eastern side of the front of the apartment building that is open and operational. It was built and is operated by the same construction developers that are working on the stadium and the future pro soccer team, so there’s that at least. On the left, you can see the office building that’s been there for years and years.

The view facing southeast from the northwest corner of the intersection of West Michigan Street and North 8th Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 31, 2025

Moving about a block east, still looking southeast. This is the grassy space where they had the official announcement of the soccer team aiming at a spot in USL Championship back in October of 2022. Looks about the same now as it did then.

The view facing southwest from the northeast corner of the intersection of North 8th Street and West Michigan Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 31, 2025.

Same intersection, just the other side of 8th street, now looking back to the southwest. The barricades stopping traffic from going south and around behind the office building is at least a step in the right direction, I guess? They’ve also been there for a while, so that’s not a new development. I don’t know if you can see it given the distance and the shading, but there is a chain link fence blocking the alcove on the front of the office building where the front doors are located.

The view facing southeast from the northwest corner of the intersection of North James Lovell Street and West Michigan Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 31, 2025.

Another block eastwards on Michigan, back to facing southeast. The brown brick building on the right side of the picture in the distance is the home for Marquette’s behavioral health clinic, and as far as I know, it’s still operational. In the distance on the left is the Milwaukee Tool office building, and in between my camera and the Milwaukee Tool building is the dirt pile left behind when they processed the bricks and other materials after the demolition of the hotel that used to be there…… and then just left the dirt pile there.

Relative to “there might be a soccer stadium being built here any day now,” it’s probably troubling that the fence around the empty former hotel lot fell down on the right there and no one has bothered to put it back up. Feels like whoever owns the land isn’t paying very careful attention to it, y’know?

I crossed James Lovell Street and turned to face southwest again. There’s the grassy space from this angle, you can see the office building in the background on the right.

The view facing southwest from the northeast corner of the intersection of North 6th Street and West Michigan Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 31, 2025

Here I went all the way over to the northeast corner of 6th Street and Michigan. No southeast facing picture here, it’s just the Milwaukee Tool building there. Now you get a better look at the dirt pile, and you can see the Marquette banner on the side of the clinic building.

There are, as you would expect, absolutely zero signs of an impending construction project. I didn’t expect there to be, mostly because there haven’t been any signs for a long time now, not since the hotel demolition finished. I’m not expecting there to be any signs until maybe a day or two before things actually get underway, either. No reason for anything to change until excavation is about to begin, and so on and so forth.

In any case, I’ll swing back in about a month or so and take some more pictures, and we’ll just keep doing that until someone says something about whether or not this thing is getting built. By the way: USL Championship is 10-ish matches into their season right now. If it takes 12-14 months to build this stadium….. do you think USL will let the Milwaukee team play 10 or more straight road games to start the 2026 season? Because that’s what the developers claim is going to happen.