KC’s Populous designs unprecedented ‘pop up’ golf stadium for putting championship

A Kansas City sports center design company has pulled off another innovation with a temporary stadium that can be disassembled and trucked off to another city.

Populous, which has designed about 2,000 sports projects in more than 30 countries, accepted a challenge from a Canadian outfit that wanted to create a “new sport” not dependent on a fixed stadium or arena.

The result is a “pop up” venue for an 18-hole golf-putting course that is the site of the first Major Series of Putting now underway in Las Vegas. Workers began erecting the stadium in late August in a parking lot near the Strip. After the championship event, the stadium will be dismantled and ready for future use.

Jeff Keas, the principal in charge of the project at Populous, said on the company’s website “there is no precedence in place. There is no such venue in the world.”

The Populous design is a large circular field surrounded by a spectator ring, without seats, that can accommodate 2,000 fans. Seats are available in the clubhouse bar.

The client was MSOP Entertainment Inc., which created a sport in which professional and amateur golfers compete for cash prizes.

“With Populous’ creative guidance we were able to produce a first-of-its-kind world-class putting venue,” Guillaume Béland, MSOP president and general manager, said on the Populous website. “We are extremely proud of the final product and can’t think of a better way to introduce the MSOP to the world.”

Populous spun off from HOK in 2008. Its headquarters is the transformed Kansas City Board of Trade building at 4800 Main St. Among its latest contracts is the $98 million Memorial Stadium South Expansion at the University of Missouri-Columbia.