New Orleans Marches On With Superdome Repairs

NEW ORLEANS -- The turf was gone, leaving the drab gray concrete floor exposed, except for one patch of green near what normally would have been the 50-yard line. There, barrels of liquid polyurethane rested alongside generators and a pump system with long tubes that ran up through an open panel in the roof. The afternoon sunlight tried to fight its way through the gap but quickly was swallowed by the dimness inside.

One goal post stood intact; the other lacked its bright yellow crossbar and uprights. There was trash in the stands, but no more than one might find in any stadium after a football game. The breeze of a crisp fall day blew in through an open loading dock behind one end zone. An American flag hung on the water-stained wall high above the opposite end zone. It was quiet, except for the humming of the equipment and the distant voices of repair workers.

The Superdome, site of so many Final Fours and Super Bowls, was a lonely place this week, the most visible symbol of the city's suffering during Hurricane Katrina having become a symbol of the struggles New Orleans now faces in its attempted rebirth. City and stadium face the same question: Can they be repaired well enough to convince their denizens to return?

The building's primary tenants, the New Orleans Saints, on Sunday will play their first NFL game in Louisiana since Katrina devastated this city. But they will play the Miami Dolphins about a 90-minute drive away in Baton Rouge, and many of the fans plan to vent their anger at the team's owner, Tom Benson, for his interest in possibly moving the franchise.

In the meantime, workers here will labor to patch together the Superdome.

"There's nothing that would make a bolder statement about New Orleans being back," Doug Thornton, one of the officials overseeing the repair work, said here this week, "than the Superdome being open for business."

Repair, Rebirth

The city is doing its best to rejuvenate itself. Along most major roads, dozens of cardboard signs on wooden stakes, some of them handwritten, are stuck in the ground to inform prospective customers which shops and restaurants have reopened. The area's long-suffering football fans would like nothing more than to see such a sign posted outside the Superdome next fall.

"People want things to hold onto, to remind them that there is still something here, a sense of community," said Steve Scalise, a Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives who is heavily involved in the city's rebuilding efforts. "People have grown up with the Saints for over 35 years. It's a part of what's unique about New Orleans. There are a lot of people that still need that release. Entertainment provides a release, and there's a lot of pressure and a lot of stress right now. I think it's important that people have some things where they can kind of take their mind away from it for a while, and the Saints provide that."

Thornton, a regional vice president for the Spectacor Management Group, the Philadelphia-based company that manages the Superdome, was inside the dome for five days after Katrina struck. He watched the water pour in and run down the walls after 70 percent of the roof was damaged by the storm, and he wondered if the building would survive.

"It's no different than your home," he said, sitting in an office in New Orleans Arena across the street from the dome. "It's just 1.8 million square feet. It's just a big building. And when that water penetrates into the interior spaces, it damages carpet, ceiling tile, electrical panels, wiring, elevators, escalators, scoreboards -- all those kinds of things that cost millions of dollars."

Thornton said he has no remaining doubt that the Superdome will survive, based on the preliminary reports of the experts hired to assess the damage.

"The building is very sound structurally," he said. "It's solid as a rock. It's just the interior spaces that need to be modified and dealt with. . . . When you have structural damage -- you know, serious structural damage -- then there would be talk about possibly replacing the dome. But we don't have that -- or at least at this point, based on what the experts are telling us, we don't have that."