Soccer players will be back on the Sports Dome field this Friday according to facility manager Norm Lamke.
The dome developed a tear in the roof and collapsed on Boxing Day. There is still no definitive cause for why or how it happened, although heavy, wet snowfall is believed to be a factor.
After days of hard work, crews finally had the dome back to its regular shape Saturday evening around 6 p.m.
"It was a tremendous amount of work," said Lamke. "We had 22 guys on the skin itself shovelling and breaking chunks of ice with sledgehammers."
With the dome inflated again, crews are now assessing the damage inside and cleaning some of the mess: getting the heating systems back up and running and fixing the lighting.
"It doesn’t look a whole bunch different than it did before," Lamke said. "The concession area is the most damaged area but the structure is still in place there. The utilities are frozen and there’s damage on the backside of it."
That area will be tarped off and made into a construction zone and will take about a month to fix, Lamke added.
A regional soccer game scheduled for this Friday will go on as planned with work on the field side of the dome ahead of schedule.
"It’s a direct result of the effort we had from the crews here on the weekend who worked hard to get it in the air Saturday," said Lamke.
