Removal of the right field bleachers that once held hoards of screaming University of Louisville football fans at Old Cardinal Stadium in Louisville has begun.
The stadium that served as a home for Louisville football and two different triple A baseball franchises (the Louisville Colonels from 1968-72 and the Louisville RedBirds/RiverBats from 1982-1999) has been used for little more than State Fair concerts since Louisville Slugger Field and Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium replaced it as the primary venues for college football and professional baseball in the Derby City in the late ’90s.
The bleacher demolition, expected to take 60 days, is the first phase of the stadium demolition that will eventually close the book on the stadium that opened in 1957 as Fairgrounds Stadium. The stadium stopped hosting Louisville football in 1997 and Triple A baseball games in 1999. After the major tenants left, it was used for fair concerts but that came to an end in spring 2013 when the State Fair Board decided to stop using the facility because of its decrepit condition.
The Courier-Journal has video of the demolition process beginning.