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The Minnesota Vikings play their home games in the Hubert H.
Humphrey Metrodome, located at 500 11th Avenue South, Minneapolis,
MN 55415. The Metrodome was built in 1982 and is owned by the city
of Minneapolis. The stadium cost $68 million to construct and was
financed through a city bond issue. The Metrodome is one of the
few fields that still uses Astroturf as opposed to the newer Fieldturf
as the surface for football games. The Minnesota Vikings might
be the biggest tenant of the Metrodome but they’re by no
means the only team that plays there. When the building opened
in 1982, the Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball also moved
in. The University of Minnesota Golden Gophers also play their
football games in the Metrodome and the Minnesota Timberwolves
of the National Basketball Association played their games in the
Metrodome for their inaugural 1989-1990 season. The Metrodome can
hold more than 64,000 people for a football game, almost 56,000
for baseball, and 40,000 for basketball games, boxing matches,
and concerts. For football games, the stadium features 113 luxury
suites. The fans of Minnesota love their Vikings and since the
1997 season, every game has been a sellout at the Metrodome.
A dome style was chosen for the Metrodome because of the bitterly
cold weather in the late months of the year. Construction began
on the Metrodome on December 20, 1979, and it took just over two
years to complete the building. The process to turn the stadium
from baseball to football or vice versa takes a mere four hours
and the only big move is a group of 7,600 retractable seats for
football that form a 23 foot high wall in the baseball configuration.
The Metrodome is the only air-supported dome in the nation, and
fans enter the park through revolving doors that prevent release
of the air that keeps the dome upright. The roof requires 250,000
cubic feet of air pressure per minute to remain inflated, and the
only collapse of the dome was in 1982, the opening year for the
stadium. The Metrodome was quickly re-inflated and no injuries
were reported.
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