Jul
17

49ers, City of Santa Clara Celebrate Ribbon Cutting

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Eight hundred and nineteen days after the 49ers, the Santa Clara Stadium Authority and its city celebrated the groundbreaking of Levi’s® Stadium, they reunited en masse to officially open their building.

Leaders from the football franchise, as well as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and local elected leaders were flanked by construction workers at the stadium’s Ribbon Cutting ceremony on Thursday morning. The workers, appropriately so, lined the red carpet at the building’s Dignity Health Plaza, wearing white T-shirts that read, “I Built Levi’s® Stadium.”

Jed York, the 49ers CEO, opened the ceremony by discussing the people and events that brought California its first new NFL stadium since 1967. “You deserve to have the best stadium in the world,” he told 49ers fans. “Now you have it.”

York, who helped to lead the organization’s “Walk for Measure J” campaign before the stadium initiative hit Santa Clara’a ballot in June 2010, admitted to a crowd also comprising 49ers employees, sponsorship partners and media that he teared up while driving to work on Thursday morning. He took State Route 237, he said, and it dawned on him that Levi’s® Stadium was promoting other development with Santa Clara.

Goodell, in his ceremony comments, told York, “Jed, you have every reason to be emotional today.”

Here is the play-by-play from the event:

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