For five uneasy years, the building team responsible for delivering the San Francisco 49ers' $1 billion new home had hung together through three work hiatuses, a recession, and a regrouping caused by a site relocation 45 miles to the south—from San Francisco's Candlestick Point to Silicon Valley's Santa Clara. Then, in early fall 2011, things changed. Suddenly the snail's pace became a race.
Based on an early opportunity to secure financing, the 49ers and the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, which will own the new Santa Clara Stadium, decided to accelerate the opening by one year. They are pulling out all the stops to finish in time for the 2014 NFL season. “It was like drag racers warming up their tires with short bursts forward at the starting line before the race begins,” says Jon D. Magnusson, president and CEO of the project's Seattle-based structural-engineering firm, Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA). “Then, all of a sudden, it was go, go, go.”
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