SPANISH FORT, Ala.—Spanish Fort football players won’t have to travel to area stadiums for every football game anymore, as the expected completion date for the school’s own stadium is set for Feb. 1, according to Bryant Vincent, Spanish Fort High School’s athletics director  and head coach.

About 4,500 sports fans can gather in the $4.8 million, red- and black-themed stadium, according to Vincent.

Before the stadium is completed, workers must lay concrete for sidewalks and put up a fence and black iron gate.

“It will take your breath away,” Mayor Joe Bonner said. “Quite naturally we are excited that now we have a home football game here and have home-field advantage.”

Bonner said that soccer, track, baseball and softball teams also will use the field, which can be used for camps and Little League events.

The city annually holds a football jamboree and invites other football teams in Little League. The field will also be used for the jamboree, Bonner said.

“It is very detail-oriented,” Vincent said in an e-mail. “Everything is first class.

“The red VIP chairbacks add a first-class touch and the red lining throughout the home side looks great.”

The chairbacks and parking packages begin at $250, which includes the chairbacks,  one regular season ticket and VIP parking.

The package’s cost will decrease with the more seats a family buys, Vincent said.

Those interested in purchasing a package can visit Spanish Fort High School at 6 p.m. Wednesday and 6 p.m. Jan. 30. Packages are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, Vincent said.

The first game on the new field will be a spring football game May 15 against Dallas County High School, Vincent said.

“We finished 11-2 and made it to the quarterfinals,” Vincent said of the fall season. “Both losses were to Vigor who won the state championship.”

Vincent said he and Principal Beverly Spondike and former Principal Michael Lucci  sat down with architects to go over their views of the stadium.

Vincent said some of his hopes for the stadium were a large press box, chairback seats, bleachers lined with red and black and for the future field house in the end zone to face the school.

Funding for the $4.8 million stadium was provided by the Baldwin County Board of Education, the  city of Spanish Fort and Cypress Equities, developers of the Spanish Fort Town Center, Bonner said.

The stadium was expected to be completed last fall, but due to delays the football team traveled to other fields for games.

It was realized that construction continued before sewer lines were added, but sewer at the stadium had been discussed at school board planning meetings for some time. Sewer options were taken out of the bid document at some point, but it’s unclear when or by whom, school board officials said.

Progress on the stadium halted for a few weeks earlier this school year; the cost to complete the sewage project was $259,500 and was paid for out of the school board’s capital bond money.

Baldwin County Sewer placed sewer lines along the field sides instead of under the field, as originally planned.