The Minnesota Vikings have cleared all the necessary hurdles for their stadium to earn its approval, and have spent the last few months working with different architectural firms and other planners to see how the project is actually going to look and come together.
On Thursday, the Vikings hosted an open house at the Metrodome, sponsored by the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, where the five architectural firms competing to land the design contract for the stadium showed off their work. According to The Pioneer Press, no renderings of the proposed stadium were featured at the event, with the firms instead displaying past work to wow the viewers.
The proposed renderings weren't released likely because the competing firms don't want their in-progress work seen by the other firms. The report from The Pioneer Press lists the bidders for the design contract, including AECOM, Ewing Cole of Philadelphia, HKS of Dallas, HNTB out of Kansas City and Populous out of Kansas City.
The most notable of those, at least as far as Minnesota is concerned, is Populous, which designed Target Field (home of the Twins), TCF Bank Stadium (home of Minnesota University athletics) and the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul (home of the Wild). The other bidders can list the stadiums for the Seattle Seahawks, New York Giants and Jets, Indianapolis Colts and the future San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., among their work.
For more on the Minnesota stadium situation, stay with SB Nation Minnesota's StoryStream. For more on the Vikings, head over to Daily Norseman. And for full NFL coverage, be sure to check out SB Nation's NFL hub.