ASHWAUBENON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – With nine months to go before Green Bay hosts the 2025 NFL Draft, league officials and draft partners were back in town last week to continue to develop plans for the three-day event.
An area of focus for the visit was making sure visitors have as high quality of an experience outside the draft footprint as they do in it.
“So what they’re continuing to do is fine tune their thinking as far as the site itself and then the transportation folks were out and about looking at more of the areas around the stadium for ingress and egress, satellite parking, those types of things,” said Aaron Popkey, director of public affairs for the Green Bay Packers.
On the heels of that visit, the Village of Ashwaubenon gathered stadium district businesses and neighbors Wednesday night so they could get a better handle on what to expect next April.
That includes the possibility of road closures up to four weeks before the draft and two weeks after for draft stage construction and takedown. Crews from the league and media will also be in the area during that same timeframe and will be looking for places to eat.
“Our counterparts in Detroit had expressed to us that once the Super Bowl has been completed then all attention from the NFL moves to the draft,” said Ashwaubenon Village Manager Joel Gregozeski while explaining when more definitive plans should be known for the draft.
Last month, the Packers revealed the NFL is tentatively planning for the draft stage to be near Oneida Street, facing Lambeau Field, with its back to the Resch Complex. The NFL Experience and draft campus entry points are expected to be near Titletown.
After the latest visit from the NFL, Popkey says there still is nothing set in stone.
“The general locations of the experience and the theater, those types of things I don’t think are going to change, it’s just more so the finer points around that,” said Popkey.
The recommendation to businesses from organizers is to keep planning and speak with counterparts in other cities that have hosted the draft. Those at the meeting say they now feel better prepared.
“It’s in the early stages and I’m more excited than I was when I came in here,” said David Edward Lepp, a member of the Moose Lodge.
The NFL Draft in Detroit this past April had more than 750,000 people attend over the draft’s three days and generated an economic impact of $213 million.
The Packers have maintained their expected attendance to be around 250,000 people with a statewide economic impact of about $94 million.
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