Promises, promises. Soccer fans in the New York metropolitan area have heard them before.

For at least the past seven years, the MetroStars and the Anschutz Entertainment Group and now the Red Bulls talked, talked, and talked some more about building a new stadium in Harrison, N.J., across the Passaic River from Newark and a PATH train ride away from Manhattan.

Now the Red Bulls have unveiled an updated, striking design for Red Bull Park, a building that is nearly certain to cost the Austria-based energy drink company more than $200 million when it is finally completed sometime during the 2009 Major League Soccer season.

The project, a public/private redevelopment scheme that will include retail, apartments and the stadium, has gone through frustrating fits and starts. Earlier this month, Red Bull, which agreed to partner with AEG on the stadium when it bought the MetroStars in 2006, completed a buyout of AEG’s interest in the project. The two companies, with vastly different corporate cultures, could not agree on many features of the stadium. AEG, which was to manage the stadium, wanted a permanent stage at one end like the ones constructed at other AEG-managed buildings in Bridgeview, Ill. and Frisco, Tex. Red Bull fought long and hard against it.



The key new feature is a dynamic foam roof — a translucent curving structure that wraps around the entire stadium in a metal shell and will shield all of the 25,189 seats from the elements. The design includes 30 luxury suites (20 lower level and 10 upper level), 1,116 club seats and a first row of seats that will be only 21 feet from the touchlines.

“Red Bull Park was re-designed to be more in line with soccer facilities worldwide,” Marc de Grandpre, the team’s managing director, said in a statement. “To fulfill our ultimate goal of creating an elite sports franchise in the United States for our fans, it is vital that we have a home that all of us can be proud of. Red Bull Park will become the benchmark in the North American soccer stadium landscape.”

The club said it hopes to soon begin construction, putting to bed the old saw that building would commence in “60 to 90 days,” words that to this day haunt the team’s former top executive, Nick Sakiewicz. Those words aside, Sakiewicz long championed the project amid the thicket of New Jersey state and local Hudson County politics.