Ericsson Stadium

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Carolina Panthers Stadium It is the first thing you see driving into town on the John Belk Freeway. Charlotte's landscape has been radically transform by the 14-story tall Carolinas NFL stadium. This monumental object has become one of the visual anchors of downtown.

Its massive black entry portals, flanked by a pair of hulking black cats, scream ``Charlotte'' just as surely as Yankee Stadium says New York, and Fenway Park says Boston. When you drive into downtown as you come up John Belk Freeway, the football stadium is your gateway. Second, you'll see First Union, and as you pull into downtown, you'll see the new convention center.'

Panthers owner Jerry Richardson's son Mark, who's oversaw the $160 million stadium development.

It was 1989, and Mark Richardson had arranged a trip to Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium for a look at how a downtown stadium worked in a comparably-sized city. He was joined by Chuck Duncan of the Charlotte Uptown Development Corp. and consultants Mike McCormack and Max Muhleman.

The four men spent three hours prowling around parking decks before the Bengals game, asking fans as they got out of their cars how they liked driving in for games.

``We must have gone into five different parking decks, and I don't think that we had a single person who said they didn't prefer having the stadium downtown,'' Duncan said. ``It was just amazing. It really was just a very vibrant, alive atmosphere.''

``Being uptown, people can stay in hotels, go to a restaurant or the performing arts center, take the kids to Discovery Place or Spirit Square on Saturday, and they don't have to get in the car to experience any of that,'' Richardson says. ``You drive in, park your car and leave it.''

A five-story parking deck will be built behind the Duke Power building to be used by luxury suite and club seat holders and the media.

Richardson Sports is building a parklike plaza around 75 percent of the stadium (all but the rear loading dock), and adding trees, benches, shrubbery and grass. That's where the stadium's Walk of Fame will be, its bricks bearing the names of the stadium's 60,000 permanent-seat license holders. The Richardsons are also considering a year-round souvenir store and concession stand, too, to encourage greater use.

In the 6-1/2 years it took to get the Carolina Panthers, Mark Richardson has lost count of how many football and baseball stadiums he visited - lifting the best ideas from each, and avoiding what didn't seem to work.

The night before NFL owners voted to award Charlotte their 29th team, he and his family attended the Monday night Bears game against the Minnesota Vikings.

There, Richardson stumbled on the final element he'd like to incorporate in the Panthers home.

``One of the interesting things about all of the people seated around us was they used to come with their fathers or grandfathers through the years, and their tickets had been passed down for generations,'' Richardson said. ``So 50 or 75 years from now, we envision people saying, These were the seats my father had when the Panthers played their first (home) game in 1996.' ``

Lstop next at another world class sports facility, Mecklenburg Aquatic Center .

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