U.S. Bank Stadium looks relatively inexpensive, in hindsight

It turns out that 2014 was a great time to build a pro-football stadium, if you're into that kind of thing.

Driving the news: Leaders in Tennessee discovered recently that fixing up Nashville's Nissan Stadium, where the Titans play, would cost double the initial estimate of $600 million, as Axios Nashville has reported.

• Just last week, the Tennessee Legislature approved $500 million in bonds to go toward building a new stadium, which is estimated to cost around $2 billion.

Flashback: Construction of U.S. Bank Stadium ran from 2014 through 2017 and ended up costing $1.1 billion.

• About $500 million came from city and state subsidies, which were hotly debated.

The big picture: Construction costs nationally are up 50% since 2014, according to an index by Golden Valley-based M.A. Mortenson, which built U.S. Bank Stadium.

• Costs jumped 21.5% from 2020 to 2021 alone.

By the numbers: Other teams, cities and states have felt those rising costs as they've built new facilities.

• Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta opened a year after U.S. Bank Stadium at a cost of $1.5 billion.
• SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles opened in 2020, costing $4.9 billion.

• Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas also opened in 2020, at a cost of $1.9 billion.
• The Bills are planning a $1.4 billion, open-air stadium in Buffalo, with $850 million in public subsidies slated for the project.

The bottom line: $1.1 billion is not a bargain by any means, but it could have been a lot worse.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that city and state subsidies covered about $500 million of U.S. Bank Stadium's construction costs, not $600 million.