Race is on to get Autzen ready for football season.

Byline: DIANE DIETZ The Register-Guard

The show got even better this week at Autzen Stadium for construction watchers charting the progress of the massive project.

Crews wheeled a second, even bigger crane into place to lift eight 97-foot roof beams atop the remodeled stadium. (Outstretched, the crane is 124 feet taller than the yellow tower on site for months.)

It's such a hugely difficult job that the contractor can raise and position only one beam per day, so the show that started Monday will continue through the weekend - wind and weather permitting.

The roof beams are the last major structural piece of the project: When they're finally in place, the new stadium profile will be completed.

Next, the action switches to the playing field when crews begin unrolling 10-yard swaths of artificial FieldTurf with the goal of meeting the early August deadline for in-stadium football practice.

Afterward, a long list of finishing projects will keep crews busy - but not "busy as Beavers," the project administrator is quick to emphasize - through the start of the 2003 football season.

But this week, the draw was the mechanical marvel of the crane. As many as 20 people at a time stood and watched from Leo Harris Parkway.

It's been like that since late last year when the college stadium's expansion began, says Dave Williford, the University of Oregon's assistant athletic director for media services.

Gawkers have seen plenty: the placement of the precast concrete columns that hold the new southside stands and the erection of a steel skeleton that will house the elite suites and press box.

But you had to get up early on the day that construction workers put up the four-story-tall, advertising-laden scoreboard: They did it at 5 a.m., said project administrator John Norton says.

Norton has become a minor celebrity since the construction project began.

"If Jerry Allen is the voice of the Ducks," he says, while perched majestically on the northeast ramp with the new risers scaling the heights behind him, "then I must be the voice of Autzen."

Norton works for the Eugene-based Wildish Building Co., which might have left the public relations to its more experienced partner, the Phoenix-based Hunt Construction Group - a key player in the building of Safeco Field in Seattle and Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco.

But Hunt officials punted, saying: "John, take care of it," Norton remembers.

So Norton has stood before the cameras dozens of times, with burly workers sweating in the background, and recited the length of beams or tonnage of precast concrete columns, and it's far different work from what he usually does.

"Nobody comes to take a picture of a sewer treatment plant being constructed," he says.

Norton's daughter, a TV production student at Boston University, has coached him on the lingo - "sound bite," "stand up," "voice over" - but the compact 61-year-old's a natural.

He's patient with people's thirst for the minutiae on the Autzen deal, and he's careful to keep reporters from embarrassing themselves.

The new beam, he said Friday, is cantilevered. "In other words, it sticks out," he said. "That's C-A-N-T-I-L-E-V-E-R."

Norton feels a bit overexposed from being in the limelight all the time, but on the other hand, having a success like Autzen Stadium to ooh-and-ahh about is a good thing for the community, he says.

The project is still within its $90 million budget, and the financing is coming together nicely - especially considering that more than 39,000 of the 40,000 season tickets available in the expanded grandstands are already sold, Williford said.

"That's money in the bank before the season even starts," he says.

Although some aspects are a bit slow - as expected on a big project - the remodel as a whole is on track to make the Aug. 31 season opener against Mississippi State, Norton says.

He has a favorite sound bite on the subject of the schedule, and you may have already heard him say it if you've been following the action:

Autzen is definitely - considering the night shifts soon to be worked under the white hot gleam of stadium lights - going to be "football ready," he says.

AUTZEN FACTS

Some statistics on the newly expanded south grandstand:

Miles of wiring: 154

Light fixtures: 4,150

Output of new emergency generator: 43 households' worth

Plumbing pipe: 14.5 miles

Bathroom fixtures: 123 urinals, 253 toilets and 239 sinks

Seats in the luxury suites: 628

Increase in bench seating: 2,500 lineal feet

Weight of precast concrete used: 18,750 tons

Volume of concrete poured in place: 15,000 cubic yards

CAPTION(S):

The roof beams are the last major structural piece of the Autzen Stadium expansion project.