Viracon to begin glass production for Vikings Stadium in January

OWATONNA — It’s business as usual for Viracon as the company is about to begin production for the Vikings stadium despite continued requests from the Audubon Society to use bird-safe glass.

“Nothing has changed. We continue on the same path we were on previously,” said Seth Madole, director of customer service for Viracon, the Owatonna-based glass company that will be manufacturing 100 percent of the exterior glass for the new stadium in Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis chapter of the Audubon Society, a branch of the national bird conservation organization, argues the glass for the new stadium will kill thousands of migratory birds.

The group has been heavily protesting the glass for the past several months, asking the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority — the organization in charge of design, construction and operation for the new stadium — to change the glass for the safety of birds.

At the beginning of the business partnership, Viracon presented the sports facilities authority with two design options: one with fritted, bird-safe glass and the other without.

Fritted glass is when a ceramic pattern is etched onto the surface for design, and, as the Audubon Society sees it, that etching creates a warning sign for birds that would otherwise collide with non-fritted, highly reflective glass.

Ultimately, the facilities authority chose the design without frit to maintain the integrity of the original design. Frit would also cost an estimated $1 million more for the already $1 billion project.

The Audubon Society garnered votes and support from the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils, but still the facilities authority hasn’t budged on the bird-safe glass even when it has been threatened with a lawsuit.

More than 70,000 letters have been sent to the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority to reconsider for the sake of the birds, according to the Action Center page on the Audubon Society’s website.

The petition reads: “The planned building features nearly 200,000 square feet of glass (that's 4 football fields of glass walls!) and is sited near a major bird migration pathway along the Mississippi River corridor. This decision is a death warrant for birds. This is a billion dollar stadium, and the cost to save thousands of birds by using bird safe glass could cost about one-tenth of one percent of that.”

The facilities authority has taken some of the Audubon Society’s pleas and protests into consideration, adopting the Audubon Society's lighting suggestions to make the stadium more bird-friendly and currently the facilities authority is talking with 3M to try to manufacture a film that could coat Viracon’s glass. The product doesn’t exist so it’s experimental, but the idea is to have an ultraviolet coating that would make the glass more visible for birds.

Madole said the film is still in the developmental stages, but it “may provide a benefit without significant impact on the design.”

He said stadium glass is scheduled to be in production in 2015, starting in January and continuing through July. Like its work with the Freedom Tower, Viracon delivers glass in sections rather than having all the thousands of square feet show up at once, Madole said. The company works with the construction schedule and will begin shipping to Minneapolis in February.

Meanwhile, Madole said, “At any given time we have between 175 to 200 projects of similar size.”

The stadium is about 20 percent complete and should be finished in time for the 2016 NFL season.