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ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis City SC soccer team will have barely taken a step out of the players tunnel before they’ll be flanked by thousands of voracious fans.

The concrete and steel stadium practically hugs the pitch where St. Louis’ Major League Soccer team will kick off its inaugural season in March 2023 in Downtown West. The most fortuitous of the 22,500 spectators will be just feet from the pitch.

“There will be no bad seat in the house,� said Matt Sebek, chief experience officer for the team.

On Wednesday, the team gave a tour of the yet-to-be-named stadium at Market and 20th streets. On the 580th day of construction, the facility is well more than halfway to the July 2022 finish line: Dozens of LED lights are hung, the canopy that stretches over seating is erected, and by spring, crews will lay the Bermuda grass — with rye overseed — currently growing in South Carolina. The stadium, built 40 feet below street level, will offer a 360-degree view of the city skyline with classic shots of the Gateway Arch and The Wheel at Union Station.

The stadium is bordered by Market Street to the south, 20th Street to the east, Olive Street to the north and 22nd Street to the west. On the south side of Market Street, construction crews from Alberici, L. Keeley Construction and Mortenson are building three practice and training fields.

Wednesday’s media tour is the latest in a string of announcements from the St. Louis City SC ownership group, comprised of Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s Taylor family and World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh.

Officials this year unveiled its four-story parking garage with ground-floor retail and event space that the team says will help create a year-round draw to the campus. Its new mobile app gives fans “insider access� to the team, including augmented and virtual reality tours of the stadium. And City SC announced St. Louis-based Together Credit Union as its banking partner.

The team also moved forward on renovating its new headquarters — the historic Union Square building at 320 South 21st Street that will house its 150 employees. The property is just steps away from the practice fields.

The team’s impact to the St. Louis region is two-fold: MLS fills a void left by the departure of the National Football League, and perhaps more importantly, City SC is leading a revitalization of a neighborhood whose heyday has long passed.

Nearly half of the $1.6 billion in building permits in Downtown West over the past 20 years have been issued since 2019 — when MLS awarded St. Louis the franchise.

Among the most high-profile of new developments: the transformation of the Butler Brothers building into apartments and the renovation of the former YMCA building into the art-centric 21c Museum Hotel.

Sebek promises the team has left no opportunity behind to create a unique experience that not only differentiates itself from the rest of the MLS but from the region.

“We think it will be a gem of the city,� he said.