Centreville Bank Stadium is opening soon. Here's how it became a reality.

Yahoo

10-05-2025

PAWTUCKET − As demolition crews began tearing down 83-year-old McCoy Stadium last month, workers were putting the finishing touches on Centreville Bank Stadium, more than a symbolic passing of the baton from the historic baseball park to a state-of-the-art soccer pitch.
The handoff reached back to August 2018, the week news broke that the Pawtucket Red Sox were leaving Rhode Island. Brett M. Johnson, a Brown University alumnus and founder of the Phoenix franchise in the fledgling United Soccer League, was in Westerly's Watch Hill section for his daughter's birthday party when he ran into a friend, who mentioned the departure in an almost offhand remark.
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"I was very quick − one − to lament that news," Johnson told The Providence Journal, "but I was − two − very quick to think, 'You know what? This is probably a great opportunity for me to look at bringing professional soccer to the Ocean State.'"
Now, after a deadly pandemic, supply-chain interruptions, a global banking crisis and skyrocketing construction costs, with Johnson as chairman of Rhode Island Football Club, the $130 million Centreville Bank Stadium is set to host its first professional United Soccer League game on May 3.
The Rhode Island Football Club's new Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket sits ready to welcome fans at the home opener on May 3.
Here's some of what went into making the stadium a reality and what awaits fans who will attend soccer matches, rugby games and other sporting contests, as well as concerts and other events there.
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Upon entering the stadium, fans might barely notice what seems like a minimalist architectural note, a sort of ultra-modern steel-beam archway that could be a nod to Stonehenge but is actually a sign of the stadium developers' hopes for the future. The beams, which line the north and south ends of the stands, are designed to support a second deck, like the grandstand on the west side, allowing the 10,500-seat stadium to be expanded.
"We basically designed a 15,000-seat stadium," said stadium executive Daniel Kroeber.
A sporting palace on the Seekonk River near downtown Pawtucket
"This stadium is going to put Rhode Island on the map," said Kroeber, who, with Johnson, is a member of Fortuitous Partners, the developers of the stadium and surrounding area. "The fan experience is going to be such that when you are here, you want to come back."
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"This project has been a dream for us, and we're very proud. We believe that Rhode Island needs a venue like this, has needed it for a long period of time," said Johnson. "Obviously, we're anchoring it with this men's team, but over time we'll host a lot more events. We think over time it'll be a real source of pride, not only for Rhode Island, for New England."
"Rhode Islanders deserve to have a pro-level stadium," said the facility's general manager, Paul Byrne.
The fan experience will start at the parking lot(s)
Rhode Island Football Club promises that the festive atmosphere on game days will start even before fans enter the stadium.
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That will start at the parking lots, most of which won't be adjacent to the stadium. The main lots, which cost $25 prepaid and are across the river and several blocks up the street from the stadium, will be the starting point for the "March to the Match," a walking route with directional signs and decorated in team colors. Defiance 1636, the recognized supporters group, will hold an organized parade before each match, complete with chanting and drums.
Once arriving at the stadium, fans will be invited to take part in Fan Fest, a festival atmosphere spread between the stadium and the river, featuring music, games and activities.
Fans who arrive at the stadium before the gates open will find concession stands and restrooms available from outside the venue, as well as the team store, but only from inside after the gates open.
The view from the seats, both on the pitch and outside Centreville Bank Stadium, is impressive
The top of the grandstand, which faces the water beyond the playing field, offers a commanding view up and down the river, almost all the way upriver to Pawtucket Falls, where the Blackstone River ends as it plunges down to start the Seekonk River. While the view of the river, and highway and road bridges crossing it, is worthy of this lofty vantage point, some sights on the far side, including the derelict and graffiti-tagged former Memorial Hospital, detract from the postcard-worthy perspective.
What are the best seats in Centreville Bank Stadium and what do they cost?
Lower-level seats at Centreville Bank Stadium are in two tones of blue to simulate waves, a nod to the Ocean State.
But most eyes will be cast down at the action on the pitch, and there is nary a bad seat in the house, among a variety of seating options, including standing locations:
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Most of the seating is available in stands on each of the four sides of the field and will be sold at a variety of price points, depending on whether a single-game ticket is purchased or packages, up to season tickets, are selected. Some tickets in the area reserved for members of the Defiance 1636 supporters section have a special season-ticket price of $16.36, honoring the year Rhode Island was founded, and some single-game tickets elsewhere in the stadium have a special single-game price of $4.01, inspired by the state's area code and available only to holders of Rhode Island driver's licenses. A typical, single-game ticket ranges from $21 to $100.
At the four corners of the stadium, and one level up from the pitch, viewing loges can be configured for up to three 12-person private-party areas, with nine seats per area.
Seats in the three Defiance 1636 supporters' sections right behind the south goal won't be seats at all. Stadium operations personnel will lock the seat bottoms in a position up against seat backs, creating standing-room-only accommodations. The rails in front of each row in those sections allow standing fans to lean against a support. The front row of those sections is extra wide to make room for drums that supporters beat almost nonstop during games. (Team executive Kroeber said the Defiance 1636 members prefer seats they can't sit in, and these sections were designed to meet their wishes. The seats can be configured in a normal sitting position before concerts and other events.)
Nine luxury suites, with tiled floors and wood-paneled walls, a color scheme meant to evoke Pawtucket's history as a center of textile mills, are available with the dining amenities typical of luxury sports suites.
Mobile suites, in trailers with seating on their roof, are available on the field underneath the main scoreboard opposite the grandstand. It's hard to get much closer to the action. "It's an incredible experience," said Kroeber. "You really feel the power and speed of the game."
Plus, the team with have four 60-seat sections that aren't in the stands at all, according to stadium general manager Paul Byrne. "We'll have fans right on the field," he said. The portable seats will be positioned behind LED message boards along the sidelines on both sides of the field.
Club seating, 500 cushioned seats, can only be reached through the club area at midfield on the main concourse. "You're literally right behind the bench," said Byrne. Food, beer and wine come with club admission to games, and the only full-service bar, a cash bar, is inside the club area, which, outside of games, can be booked for private functions. Available club seats go for $217.
Want a bite to eat during a match?
The 3,100-square-foot club area, which can seat 50 to 175 when rented as an event space on days without games, will be served by a special kitchen that will also cater events booked outside of games.
The stadium will have traditional sports food, such as burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken and beverages served at concession stands throughout the stadium. Specialty kiosks, such as one run by the nearby Maven's Delicatessen, will also be available. And "markets," high-tech convenience-store-like outlets, will focus on quick-pay, self-serve food vending.
So much more than your typical grass field
The artificial turf field can be quickly changed for other events at the new Centreville Bank Stadium.
The playing surface is the highest-level artificial turf available, said Kroeber, and it has to be certified for play by soccer's international governing body, FIFA.
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Sleeves have been installed in the ground to allow swapping among soccer goals, rugby goal posts and American football goal posts. "We'll be converting this thing in less than 24 hours," said stadium manager Byrne.
That will be put to the test on the stadium's opening weekend: after Rhode Island FC plays its inaugural home match on May 3, the stadium will host the Boston Banshees, a women's professional rugby team, as they host the Denver Onyx.
The lines painted on the field can be erased by a brushing machine, much like a giant Etch A Sketch. "It's a blank canvas for us to do whatever we want in here," said Kroeber.
Games will feature video boards and light shows
The stadium will feature five video boards to provide information and entertainment to fans:
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The main 18-foot-high, 50-foot-wide scoreboard is opposite the grandstand.
An auxiliary scoreboard, 13 feet by 33 feet, in the northwest corner of the stadium for those who don't have a good view of the main board.
Two "ribbon" boards − 3 feet high and 33 feet wide − over the corner loges at the north and south ends of the stadium on the side toward the river.
A 7-foot-wide-by-13-foot-high marquee is located behind the north goal, above the main entrance and exits to the stadium. This screen has two sides that can display different messages, such as a bag policy on the side facing people entering the stadium and concession specials on the side facing people already in the stadium.
The visual effects of the video boards will be supplemented by flashing the stadium's main lights and by lights on the six light towers that can change the colors of the supporting poles.
Centreville Bank Stadium will not be just a soccer venue
The waterfront stadium has drawn interest from colleges and universities and professional sports teams, and it will be marketed as a venue for concerts and other events.
"It's going to be the only stadium of its kind," said Kroeber. "There really is no stadium like this in New England. There's Gillette Stadium, which is massive. It's beautiful for the Patriots and for an NFL team, but it's really tough for anybody else. Unless you're Taylor Swift or Coldplay or somebody like that, it's hard to fill a 65,000-seat venue. A 10,000-seat venue that's built with all of the state-of-the-art amenities of a stadium like [this] does not exist, and it's in huge demand in the marketplace."
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It has the potential to host state high school championships for American football and lacrosse, in addition to soccer.
Enough locker-room space to host four teams simultaneously
The stadium has a main locker room for Rhode Island FC, complete with a training room, plus comparable facilities for the visiting team. It also has an auxiliary locker room that can accommodate two teams, allowing for doubleheaders or tournaments. Plus, it has locker facilities for coaches.
RIFC players relax in the team's locker room after a practice in March.
Riverwalk will be a place for passive recreation on days without games
A riverwalk and bike path will run the length of the property between the stadium and the Seekonk River. Public parking will be available at the south end of the property.
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Eventually, the riverwalk will connect to a short stretch of bike path in downtown that runs between the Blackstone River and City Hall, Kroeber said.
The stadium comes broadcast-ready
Beneath the grandstand, the stadium has a control room where video and other signals transmitted from throughout the venue will be processed and ready to be passed on to broadcast partners. This will make Centreville Bank Stadium eligible to host games that are carried live on network television. Already, CBS has scheduled coverage of two Rhode Island FC games this season.
Echoes of McCoy
While Centreville Bank Stadium is the successor to McCoy Stadium on the other side of the river, it is not a replacement for the venerable baseball park. But Byrne said some seats salvaged from McCoy Stadium will be installed in the new stadium, though the location hasn't been finalized.
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"It's important not to erase history, to continue these traditions," said Byrne.
To that end, Centreville Bank Stadium will carry on McCoy's role in hosting Independence Day fireworks, to be shot this year from the Seekonk River on July 5.
A friend to the environment
The development team said that the stadium will be the first all-electric soccer stadium in the United States.
"It means that we have no fossil fuels. We're not using natural gas, we're not using oil anywhere in the stadium. So it's 100% electric-run. Even our grills and our ovens in the kitchens are all electric," Kroeber said. "It's the direction of the future to be as environmentally sensitive as we can be."
Why did Fortuitous Partners choose this site on the Seekonk River to build Centreville Bank Stadium?
Before the stadium project could even be an idea, Johnson had to evaluate whether it made sense from a business perspective. With a large immigrant population from soccer-rich cultures, it seemed a no-brainer.
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"The demographics of Rhode Island really lend itself to the beautiful game, the melting pot of incredible immigrant countries that make up the wonderful state of Rhode Island," said Johnson.
And state and city officials were looking for a project to fill the gap when the PawSox announced their departure for Worcester, Massachusetts.
"We were really clear that we couldn't take over McCoy," said Johnson. "It really needed to be in a different location. One is obviously just the geometry of a diamond, meaning baseball, to a rectangle, meaning football or soccer. But above and beyond that, it was a fairly run-down asset that would be very, very difficult to have the kind of world-class stadium" that Johnson envisioned.
Officials had designated an "opportunity zone" on both sides of the north end of the Seekonk River, offering tax incentives to developers.
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That included a "brownfield" site, a former manufactured gas plant that National Grid, now called Rhode Island Energy, was cleaning up.
"They were going to fence it," said Johnson. "You couldn't build housing on this, but you can build a phenomenal, world-class stadium. So, if not for us, you would have had a former brownfield site that was fenced along the riverside with no public access. And now, with this project, we have opened up the riverfront. It's going to be, when we're not on game days, it'll be public access with walkways and bike paths."
And Johnson had a personal tie to the site, from his days on the crew team at Brown University, whose race course on the Seekonk River starts near the stadium site.
"I literally had a ground-level view of this site and Pawtucket from when I was 18 years old," he said. "Candidly, you could see the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. It was a fairly polluted landscape."
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And the riverfront site was an obvious draw.
"There's not many stadiums that are situated in such close proximity to the water," said Kroeber, adding that they are working on plans for after this season for people to come to matches by boat and either tie up at floating docks on the stadium side of the Seekonk River or at Town Landing on the opposite side. "We have a vision for boats being out on the water on a beautiful July day, coming up in force, and there's really no stadiums that I'm aware of that will have this type of experience. So when we designed the building, we really wanted to make sure we focused on the river."
Developers overcame once-in-a-lifetime hurdles to build the stadium
While Johnson put the plans for the stadium in motion soon after the PawSox announced their departure in 2018, the project had to navigate some pretty turbulent waters.
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In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put stadium plans on hold for nearly two years.
But, in October 2021, the utility company began its work remediating the polluted site, putting down a protective layer to keep contaminated soils away from the surface, said Kroeber. "They saw the vision of what this could be as opposed to just making a meadow that had no public utility. Having a stadium that would anchor a big development, they saw the mission of that."
Around the same time as the remediation work, the stadium developers employed deep vibratory compaction to firm up soils that were suitable to support the buildings planned for the site.
With the groundwork done, and after a ceremonial groundbreaking on Aug. 12, 2022, construction of foundations began in November 2022. Everything ground to a halt − and the barely begun stadium seemed imperiled − in the summer of 2023, when, amid a global banking crisis, it looked like the project would fall short of financing. But, after a publicly unnamed party with a net worth in excess of $250 million joined Johnson to provide a personal financial guarantee the stadium would be finished, the deal was back on, and construction resumed a few weeks later.
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"I feel that the only thing that didn't go wrong is that a plague of locusts didn't come take all the steel off the site when it finally got delivered," said Johnson. "I mean, we certainly had, to use a baseball analogy, a lot of curveballs. None of this stuff is for the faint of heart."
Wasn't housing and other development supposed to be part of the stadium project?
When the developers made the pitch for public assistance as part of the project − a tab that totals $51 million, not including bargaining costs, they painted a picture of housing and commercial development on both sides of the river, plus public parks and a pedestrian bridge connecting it all.
In the last two years, attention has focused on the stadium itself, with little seeming to happen on the rest. Has Fortuitous Partners decided to move on when the stadium is done?
An artist's rendering, looking north, shows what the stadium project is expected to look like once completed, including the residential and commercial developments linked by a pedestrian bridge, seen at upper left.
"We're excited about it. Our entire business plan has always been predicated on developing the entire corridor on both sides of the river," Johnson told The Journal in March. "We were trying to turn the lights on with the stadium. We're going to start to move to make sure that the housing is coming online shortly thereafter."
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"We are actively making progress," said Kroeber. "We have our design team working on the design. We're actively pursuing permits, and we're moving that phase of the project forward." He promised more specifics about further development soon.
In August, the city awarded a $1.4 million contract to Beta Inc., a Lincoln engineering firm, to begin design work on the riverwalk and bridge.
"We're working very closely with the city planning for the riverwalk," said Kroeber. "There's going to be a riverwalk, there's a pedestrian bridge that will be built connecting both sides of the river. And then there will be a building north of the stadium, and that will probably come last in the process just for logistical reasons."
He added: "All of that stuff is all being worked on right now. It's being designed. It's being permitted. We're going to begin the permitting process here very soon on that."
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Kroeber acknowledged that it has taken longer than originally promised.
"The determination that we had to get the stadium done, we have the same determination to deliver the entirety of our vision for this project," said Kroeber. "We will make sure that we deliver what we had originally envisioned for the entirety of this project."
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RIFC's stadium: It's location, what it's called and how to get tickets