GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – When non-Packers sporting events take place at Lambeau Field, the Packers’ locker room is off limits, as players use the facility all year round.
Instead, a temporary locker room is set up in one of the facility gyms — a gym that will soon be renovated into a Packers team space, according to Aaron Popkey, the team’s director of public affairs.
That’s why the Packers now want to build a new, third locker room.
“We waned to make this investment in a permanent space so we won’t have to do modular, temporary spaces in the future,” Popkey says. “We just felt in the long run, it’s a good investment for those types of events we feel we’re going to have more of in the future.”
But the project comes with a $5 million price tag.
The Packers have asked the Green Bay/Brown County Professional Football Stadium District to pitch in nearly $3 million from the district’s capital improvement fund.
The fund isn’t tax payer money; it’s built up through user fees from game tickets and is saved for projects like these.
The board’s executive director says right now, there’s around $6.5 million in the fund, and they don’t allow the fund to dip below $2 million, just in case.
On Monday afternoon, some board members shared their concerns over granting the money to the Packers or the project.
“In the contract, they’re supposed to try and have as many events as they can, at least one per year, but they’ve been only averaging one about every four years, so it seems like a lot of money for a locker room that’s going to be used three, four, five times, maybe, over the next 10-12 years. Could the money be put other places within the stadium that’s going to do more good?” asked Bill Galvin, an alderman for the City of Green Bay and a board member for the Stadium District.
The last time an outside sporting event was hosted at Lambeau was in 2022, when European soccer teams Bayern Munich and Manchester City played a friendly exhibition match. Before that, it was the 2016 UW-LSU college football game.
The next scheduled college football game is slated for September 5, 2026, when UW faces off with Notre Dame.
But Popkey and the Packers believe the new addition will help draw more outside sporting events.
“To be able to put this locker room in place and have two permanent locker room facilities for teams to use when they’re here, we think, adds to the attractiveness of Lambeau Field as a facility for those,” Popkey said.
Some board members agree.
“We’ve pushed the Packers really hard on having more of these events in the bowl outside of Packer games to bring more in,” said board member Keith Lucas during Monday’s meeting. “This seems like a project that’s going to allow them to do that and remove a barrier to doing it.”
Others, like Galvin, are still on the fence and need more information from the Packers.
“I think what really draws people here is it’s Lambeau Field, and it’s the city of Green Bay,” he tells FOX 11 News. ” I don’t think the first thing they’re going to ask, or even on the line they’re going to ask, ‘Well, what kind of facilities do you have for our staff?”
The Stadium District board voted to push the vote to approve or deny the fund until they meet in June. But, that doesn’t mean the Packers can’t start construction.
Popkey tells FOX 11 that the project can be done without the funds from the Stadium District board, but that a project like this, they believe, aligns with what the capital improvement funds are for.
If the funds aren’t approved, the Packers will likely still move forward with the addition and fund the full $5 million project themselves. Ideally, they say, it would be complete by next summer.
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