By Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter Published Jul 10, 2017 at 6:48 PM

The Milwaukee Bucks’ new arena is quickly taking shape. Construction on the $524 million project continues full steam ahead, the work is reportedly almost halfway finished and the venue is still expected to open in the fall of 2018, before the beginning of the NBA season.

The structure looms over the west side of Downtown, a striking visual attraction on the city’s landscape, with its hulking, curved steel skeleton holding a nearly installed seating bowl and much of the roof already in place. This fall, the building is expected to be fully enclosed, and the interior work can be done. The team's new training center, next door to the arena, is all but complete.

But since a picture is worth a thousand words, we’d rather show you the progress than just tell you how it’s going. Here are seven of the most recent photos of the new Bucks arena, courtesy of the good people at MKE Drones:

Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.

After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.

Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.