Skol, Eagan! Vikings land in new practice center

As for the players, they’ve got two fireplaces in their locker room, with black leather couches and multiple wall televisions. Winter Park had none of that, just rickety folding chairs.
The players get their own auditorium, too, something they never had at Winter Park. The new space has theater seating for 170 and large, cushioned chairs with drink-holders facing a giant screen.
From his spot up front, Coach Mike Zimmer will be able to make eye contact — a specific request of his — with every player in the room. The player “auditorium” at Winter Park was a curtained-off corner of the fieldhouse with hard chairs and folding tables that did double duty as a space for news conferences.
Unlike the team’s Winter Park weight room in a bifurcated hallway, the new weight room has two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. Its western wall faces the under-construction stadium, which has seating for 6,500 — expandable to 10,000. Its eastern wall, with windows that can be rolled up like garage doors, opens to four new outdoor practice fields covered in Kentucky bluegrass. The grass was grown in Colorado on a sod farm, driven 14 hours in refrigerated trucks and laid last year.
Two of the fields are heated with 65 miles of underground tubing, according to Chad Lundeen, Vikings vice president of facilities and operations. Running through the tubes: 15,000 gallons of glycol, a chemical compound containing alcohol.
Team trainer Eric Sugarman said the showpiece of the new training facilities is the pools. “We spared no expense here,” he said, standing in front three pools of varying temperatures and depths to accommodate players of all sizes. One pool includes an underwater treadmill that can go 6 feet deep and 8.5 miles per hour — not an easy setting, Sugarman added.
http://www.startribune.com/skol-eagan-vikings-land-in-new-practice-center/476385973/