NFL stadium that cost just $45m was abandoned and is banned from being demolished
The Eighth Wonder of the World is now a far cry from its heyday.
Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: NFL, NBA, Houston Rockets
John McDougall
Topics: NFL, NBA, Houston Rockets
An iconic NFL stadium which cost $45million to construct now lies dormant and abandoned but is banned from being demolished.
The Astrodome in Houston, Texas, has been home to a range of different sporting teams in the city over the years.
This included NFL side the Houston Oilers and MLB outfit the Houston Astros, with the stadium also serving as the part-time home of NBA team the Houston Rockets.
The stadium opened back in 1965 and was dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, though when it opened officially it was the named the Harris County Domed Stadium.
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It became the first major sports venue to have artificial turf installed just a year after it opened and also featured the first animated scoreboard.
However, over time the stadium began to show signs of ageing and the Oilers moved to Tennessee in 1996 and later became known as the Tennessee Titans in 1999.
The Houston Texans replaced the Oilers and moved to the brand new NRG Stadium in 2002, which was built near the Astrodome a stone's throw away.
The last concert that was held at the Astrodome was in 2002 and the stadium became a makeshift shelter in 2005 following the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Some 25,000 evacuees from New Orleans moved to the Astrodome as it became their temporary home.
The building was closed in 2008 and now, only security guards and maintenance workers have been allowed access to the Astrodome.
Images from recent years show the Astrodome in a state of disrepair, including rows of seats and rolls of Astroturf lying around on the arena floor, as turnstiles stand vacant.
It now merely a storage facility for NRG Park and the newer NRG Stadium which stands adjacent to the Astrodome.
Parts of the Astrodome were demolished in 2013, but the rest of the structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places just a year later, meaning the remainder of the building cannot be knocked down.
Several plans to redevelop the building have been drawn up since the Astrodome's closure, but none have turned into reality as of yet, and what the structure will ultimately end up being used for remains uncertain.
Blueprints to raise the dome floor and create a massive underground car park were approved in 2016 and had been due to cost $105m, but the project was shelved three years later in 2019 over concerns the plan would not have led to a usable building.