Hub City Spartanburgers GM says Fifth Third Park construction on track for opening day

Fifth Third Park is on track for a grand opening with all aspects up and running.

“Everyone speaks with high confidence that in April 2025, we will be opening a fully functional ballpark to the people of Spartanburg,” Hub City Spartanburgers General Manager Tyson Jeffers said this week.

Jeffers presented an overview of the stadium project at the Spartanburg City Council meeting on July 22, including a flyover video rendering of the stadium and footage from the team’s name announcement in May .

Jeffers told the council members that, according to the stadium's developer, The Johnson Group, and the construction crew, the stadium should be move-in ready by February or early March.

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“Knowing that, our staff has started to sell tickets. We’ve started to build out the schedule beyond baseball, so for special events, whether that’s a concert or a private event happening up in the Milliken Club space. Our goal is for the 299 days we’re not playing professional baseball, something is happening in that space,” Jeffers said.

Currently, crews are working on the seating bowl.

“The pre-fab seating bowl is starting to get dropped. I think they started last week and that’s continuing through this week,” Jeffers said. “Once that’s done, the whole service and team level will be fully enclosed, which means that they can start to put up sheetrock and put in the infrastructure that goes into those spaces and start to build them out, which is really exciting.”

Jeffers presentation also included some insights into the plans for concessions at the stadium.

“We will not have belly-up concession stands,” Jeffers said, referring to the traditional style of stall concession stands where customers walk up to a counter to place their orders. “We’ll build that in the form of a marketplace … It’s essentially a self-serve space unless you’re purchasing something that’s specialty. And then throughout the concourse, there will be portables with specialty items.”

He noted that the concourse would be an area where they would be trying to meet a variety of needs.

“Adult beverage areas, non-adult beverage areas, kid zones — all of that will exist on the concourse, and we will try to meet the needs of as many demographics and age ranges as possible,” Jeffers said.

What to know about the new team and stadium

On July 23, the team announced that it will be joining the High-A South Atlantic League when the 2025 season begins.  Other teams in that league include the Greenville Drive and the Asheville Tourists.

The Spartanburgers will be one of three teams in the South Atlantic League that are owned by Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH). DBH owns 32 other baseball teams across the country in 21 other states and one team in Canada.

The Spartanburg team will be playing in a 3,500 seat, $58.6 million stadium on South Daniel Morgan Avenue. The stadium received final approval from the city's Design Review Board in March.

Samantha Swann covers city news, development and culture in Spartanburg. She is a University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College alumna. Contact her at sswann@shj.com or on Instagram at @sam_on_spartanburg.

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Hub City Spartanburgers GM says Fifth Third Park construction on track for opening day