Teaming up to make big impression on football fans
By Judy Berthiaume
The Village of Ashwaubenon – a small community that borders Green Bay’ s historic Lambeau Field – has decades of experience accommodating the 80,000-plus football fans who fill its streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and businesses before and after every Packers home game.
Those efforts included making it easier and safer for pedestrians to move around areas near Lambeau Field and the Titletown District, where most NFL-related events took place. The stadium is in the City of Green Bay, but Ashwaubenon borders it on three sides and is home to Titletown.
Village officials updated their game-day playbook to help Green Bay win big when it hosted the 2025 National Football League Draft on April 24-26. One of the NFL’ s largest events, the draft attracted more than 250,000 people daily, including many first-time visitors to the Green Bay area.
“ The NFL draft will likely only come here once, so we have one opportunity to get it right,” said Brian Rickert, Ashwaubenon’ s director of public works, pre-event.“ We know it’ ll have a big, big impact on our area. We want everything to go well while people are here, and we want them to leave with the best possible impression of the area. We’ re doing all we can to make sure we’ re ready.”
Keeping pedestrians in mind, the village hired Ayres to design the Lombardi Access Road Reconstruction and Brookwood Drive Improvements project.
“ This project was a major priority because we had a broken link in our pedestrian transportation network,” Rickert said.“ There was a sidewalk west of Argonne Street and another that went east on Brookwood Drive, but we had one city block where there was no pedestrian accommodation plan. So, during games at Lambeau Field or events in Titletown, people would walk in the roads or parking lots to get to their destinations.”
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