Lucas Oil Stadium Almost Ready

Excitement is building as Lucas Oil Stadium nears completion. The $675-million stadium is set to open to the public in about 150 days. Columnist Bill Benner, for one, is excited.

It’s no longer an architectural rendering. It’s no longer a toylike model. It’s no longer a “ground breaking” in a pile of dirt on an asphalt parking lot. It’s no longer bare girders and precast concrete. In a month, it will no longer be, temporarily at least, open to the heavens. And in less than five months—if, as we used to say in Center Grove, the Good Lord’s willing and the cricks don’t rise—it no longer will be just that mammoth structure rising between West and Missouri streets.

It will be ours, and in that personal pronoun, I mean, sincerely, that Lucas Oil Stadium will belong to all of us, not just residents of Indianapolis and the contiguous counties who have pitched in on the funding, but to all Hoosiers who will find their way to its doors and share in the pride that will accompany its opening.