Incorporating a new soccer stadium for Austin into the fabric of the city

In 2017, it was announced that a Major League Soccer team was looking to make a new home in Austin. Several sites for a prospective stadium were considered, and in 2018, McKalla Place was selected in the North Burnet section of North Austin.

“Historically, especially with NFL teams, stadiums are in the middle of nowhere, because they can build seas and seas of parking,” says Bobak Tehrany, Chief Operating Officer of BOE. “But with soccer, especially with the European model, we want to be in dense areas that have commercial, restaurants, and bars. People want to be able to walk, bike, and take a bus or train to a game.”

The Q2 Stadium project needed a savvy transportation firm to quickly, and efficiently, come up with a plan for moving 20,000 stadium goers from the streets to their seats.

BOE understood that with a dense location such as where the stadium is located, cars are a small piece of the transportation puzzle. BOE’s site plan provided for new roads and traffic lights to facilitate the flow of car traffic, as well as dedicated parking, walking, and biking plans. The BOE team also coordinated a working group of over thirty different agencies to meet on a monthly basis, with subcommittees organized to tackle every aspect of mobility. This collaboration resulted in a new transit station, McKalla Station, bringing a whole new level of interconnectivity between the stadium and the city.