photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Demolition work on the east grandstands has begun at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, pictured on Dec. 19, 2025.

Hardcore football fans know that offenses sometimes try to “take the top off” of a defense by running deep passing routes. You don’t have to be very hardcore, though, to recognize another “take the top off” strategy being employed at KU’s football stadium currently.

Crews are literally taking the top off of the stadium.

Indeed, demolition work has begun on the east grandstands at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. Crews on Friday morning had removed about three-quarters of the top portion of the east grandstands, while the far southern end of the grandstands had been fully removed.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Demolition work on the east grandstands has begun at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, pictured on Dec. 19, 2025.

Ultimately the entire east side of the stadium will be removed to make way for a new set of seats and suites to roughly match the west side of the stadium, which was rebuilt and opened to the public this season.

The late December demolition is in line with the timeline KU officials have previously announced. The rebuilding process also appears to remain on schedule. KU leaders this week got a key construction document approved by the Kansas Board of Regents.

The Regents routinely approved a “program statement” that gives KU the official authority to build new parking and a new public plaza on the east side of the stadium. The project includes two levels of parking totaling about 640 spaces on the east side of the stadium. Ultimately, some student housing and retail will be built above those parking spaces, but those components haven’t yet been formally submitted to the Regents for approval.

Instead, this week’s approval was only for the parking structure and an approximately 20,000 square-foot plaza area that will be located along the eastern edge of the stadium.

The plaza has been touted as a new gathering place for both the KU and Lawrence community. It will allow for a variety of outdoor events, including some smaller concerts, KU officials have said. Some of you might be familiar with the stage area in the KC Power and Light District. This plaza could be used in a similar way, although I’ve heard from some KU officials that they expect KU’s plaza to be bigger than the Power & Light version.

Design details of the plaza, however, were few in the document that the Regents approved this week. The document says the area will have year-around capabilities to host events, and it also states that there will be easy pedestrian access to the plaza from both 11th and Mississippi streets and from The Hill, which is to the south of the stadium.

The plaza also will provide access to KU stadium gates, and also will connect to the hotel and the student housing, according to the document approved this week. One design detail that I’m still trying to picture is that the plaza will be built atop a portion of the 640-space parking structure. My current understanding is that parking structure will be two levels and will be built primarily above ground, thus the plaza may be elevated a bit. We’ll see how that comes together as the design gets finalized.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Demolition work on the east grandstands has begun at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, pictured on Dec. 19, 2025.

There’s still some time on that front. Demolition work must be completed before construction can begin, but that likely will occur early in 2026. As a reminder, KU already has announced it plans to have the lower bowl of the east grandstands open for KU football games for the 2026 season. The upper bowl won’t be done until the 2027 season. That also is the season that KU anticipates completing the parking and the plaza components.

The two components approved this week — the parking and the plaza — are expected to cost $64 million. That’s in addition to the estimated $177 million price tag to build the east side seats and the suites, which were approved by the Regents last month.

All of that is in addition to the $488 million worth of construction for the west side seats and suites, plus a 1,000-seat conference center located in the north end of the stadium. Of course, those projects already have been approved and built, and are in the process of being paid for by me through purchases of nachos roughly the size of an offensive lineman.

If you are trying to total up the dollars at home, your abacus may be smoking at this point, but should read $689 million. That won’t be the final dollar total for this project. The question will be how much more will be added, and I suspect that is a big topic of negotiations between KU and the private development group KU has chosen to get this project to the finish line.

KU is relying on a private group — it is led by Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate, which built the new KCI airport — to develop an approximately 160-room hotel that will connect to the conference center, and about 440 beds of student housing that would be located where the stadium’s east side surface parking lot is currently located. Additionally, plans call for about 40,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space at the site.

A development agreement between the City of Lawrence and KU — signed in order for KU to get access to about $96 million of funds that will be generated by new taxing districts at and around the stadium — estimates that the private development group will build those parts of the project for about $126 million.

However, KU and the Edgemoor group haven’t yet come to any such formal agreement. Negotiations, though, are underway, and Jeff DeWitt, the chief financial officer for KU, told me this week that they are continuing to go well. The hotel portion of the project is viewed as being critical to the success of the conference center. KU certainly has every expectation that a deal will be reached to build that hotel and other amenities.

Likely the greatest sign of those expectations are excavators tearing down the east side of the stadium piece by piece.

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photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Demolition work at the former Sallie Mae office complex, 2000 Bluffs Drive, is shown on Dec. 19, 2025.

You could legitimately state it is demo days in Lawrence currently. In addition to the stadium demolition, crews are tearing down what once was one of Lawrence’s largest office complexes. The former Sallie Mae student loan offices are being torn down near Sixth and Iowa streets.

Technically the address is 2000 Bluffs Drive, but the site is just northeast of the T-intersection of Sixth and Iowa streets. You may recall that the City of Lawrence had considered purchasing the building as a new location for City Hall. That idea, however, ultimately was rejected by city commissioners, and we had reported that an apartment and office development was planned for the site. Those plans, however, did not include tearing down the building.

However, the development group has shifted some. Lawrence businessman Doug Compton is now the lead developer of the site, he told me recently. He is focusing solely on apartments at the location, he said. Current plans call for about 175 apartments with a little more than 340 bedrooms, Compton told me.

Look for more on those plans after demolition of the building is complete in the coming weeks.