Turner Construction has a new crown jewel to show off. They’ll do that to about 70,000 purple-clad (okay, some will wear orange) football fans when the University of Washington opens the new Husky Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 31, at 7 p.m. against Boise State.

The nearly two-year, $280 million project, designed by 360 Architecture and completed by Turner, overhauled the 1920 Husky Stadium, offering an entirely new perspective on football in Seattle, even if the views of Lake Washington remain.

The original 1920 lower horseshoe bowl held 30,000 fans and received an update in 1936. But it was in 1950 when things took a real vertical move, with a steeply pitched grandstand added above the existing seats on the south side. A matching grandstand was added on the north side in 1987, even if the original attempt completely collapsed during construction. Gone now, though, is the entire original bowl (including the track and vast space between the field and the stands), the small bleachers on the east end and the entire southern grandstand.

Photo by The Seattle Times

The renovation brought the seats right to the field, which required lowering the field four feet for proper sloping. The end zone corners rest 20 feet from the stands and there’s just 48 feet from the stands at midfield.

But while there’s a completely new bowl, the north grandstands remained and the brand-new southern grandstand mimics the old look, which also provides cover for fans from the weather and serves as a way to keep fan noise inside the stadium.

Adding in modern amenities to the seats, legroom expanded from 27 inches to 32 inches, which actually brought total capacity down about 2,000 seats. Don’t fret, though, by adding 146 toilets, there should be even plenty more options to take a break after a Husky three-and-out.

But constructing new seats wasn’t the only uptick of the project. The Huskies also received a completely new two-story 83,000-sq-ft football operations center worked into the new west end, complete with a W-shaped locker room actually at the stadium—not down a walkway at the basketball complex. Included in the center is everything you’d expect, from lounges and weight rooms to meeting rooms and a team shop.

At the southwest corner, 200 new underground parking stalls were added and the ground floor of the new south grandstands houses the UW Sports Medicine Clinic, a 30,000-sq-ft, $11 million facility worked into the stadium.

The 22-month construction project brought in 36,000 cubic yards of concrete, but recycled 96 percent of all debris and waste from the old stadium. Concrete was crushed for use as fill and the old aluminum bleachers were even used as framing for art in the stadium, most noticeably the illuminated Ws in two of the stadium corners.

The upgrade also includes 2,500 new club seats, 30 suites and 60 loge boxes, including field-level suites in the new east end zone, below the largest—at 108 ft by 31.2 ft—of the nine new video boards.

Now taxpayers and football fans who have paid for the shiny new upgrades can only hope there’s plenty of positive action worth watching on the new video boards and from the seats so close to the field. It all starts Saturday.

Tim Newcomb is Engineering News-Record’s Pacific Northwest contributor. He also writes for TIME, Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated and more. You can follow him on Twitter at @tdnewcomb or visit his website here.