Vicksburg High’s Memorial Stadium is getting a facelift just in time for the start of the 2016 football season.

Construction crews this week are demolishing two sections of concrete bleachers on the visitors’ side to make room for a picnic area and handicap seating, Vicksburg Warren School District athletic director Preston Nailor said.

Demolition will be finished by the end of the week, and construction will begin Monday. All of the work is expected to be finished in time for the Red Carpet Bowl on Aug. 19.

“After three weeks we should be ready to roll, and Vicksburg High will have something to be proud of come the Red Carpet Bowl,” Nailor said.

While the project will improve the look of the nearly 60-year-old stadium, it was also necessary. Groundwater has been seeping underneath the concrete stands on the Lee Street side for years and causing them to slowly collapse. The stands were reinforced in the 2000s, but time and water continued to win the war.

The section of the stands being replaced had been deemed unsafe, Nailor said, because of the threat of collapse. He said the rest of the bleachers will eventually need to be replaced as well, but are structurally sound for now.

“Those stands were sinking into the ground. We were told not to use those because it was a safety issue, so it was necessary and something we wanted to do,” Nailor said. “It’s problems everywhere because they’ve been there so long. But those were the parts that needed the most fixing.”

The Memorial Stadium project is one of several upgrades scheduled for athletic facilities in the Vicksburg Warren School District. Gym floors at both Vicksburg High and Warren Central are being resurfaced, and there are smaller projects planned for Warren Central’s baseball field and Vicksburg’s softball field.

Nailor said the goal is to fix and upgrade a few things each year while checking them off of a long wish list.

“Every single year, I want to make sure we do something at both fields,” Nailor said. “As long as we’re making progress, changing something out, we’re doing well. We want to give both schools something to be proud of.”