"From our academic reputation and admissions to fundraising and research investment, Temple is an institution on the move," said President Neil D. Theobald in a statement. "Having our own stadium will help showcase our vibrant campus as we celebrate Temple’s accomplishments on and off the field.”

"At the same time, the retail components we envision for this property will contribute to North Philadelphia’s growing economy and the renaissance along North Broad Street," Theobald continued. "We will continue to work together with local residents and city leaders on this opportunity."

The board’s resolution establishes a number of specifications to be met as the project moves forward, according to a statement issued by the university, including that Temple spend no more than $1 million to pursue initial designs and studies. Additionally, the university must collaborate with community members and government officials to address local residents’ concerns related to parking, trash and noise.

In terms of cost, the board has capped the project’s total budget at $130 million, with a fundraising goal of $50 million. Cost reductions and revenue enhancements must also result in net savings of about $3 million annually through 2024, compared to the most recent lease extension terms proposed to use Lincoln Financial Field, where the Temple Owls currently play football, according to a statement. Project funding is expected to come from both private donations and bonds, and student tuition will not be used. Any future capital expenditures, financing and naming opportunities related to the project must also move through ordinary board approval processes.

Bringing football to the campus would, according to the university, create a new experience for Temple students — 15,000 of which live on or around campus — as well as alumni and fans. Instead of traditional parking-lot tailgating, celebration zones would be designated around the new facility, modeled after similar on-campus celebration areas at other urban universities. This move would concentrate pregame activities to the Main Campus, which is also easily accessible by regional rail and subway and bus lines.

"Our trustees have moved thoughtfully and cautiously during this process," Theobald said in a statement. "As we move forward, we will be sure to have a retail and athletic complex of benefit to our campus and community."
 

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However, the school recently celebrated the first anniversary of its new Christian L. Siebert Park. The school’s new home field reopened in fall 2014 after a $4.7 million facelift ,which included a new artificial turf field, home stadium seating stretching nearly the entire length of the field, an indoor team room, public restrooms and a field house able to accommodate two football teams. New tennis courts, a six-lane track and a softball field also rounded out the overhaul.

“This was an extremely exciting and important project that took nearly three years for Camp Hill to put together,” said Bob Royer of Lemoyne, Pa.-based KS Heagy Contractors Inc., the project’s builder. “This was a much-needed and significant expenditure for a community with a great sense of pride and deep loyalty to its high school sports teams.”

Royer also noted that every dollar had to be maximized. “The specification process had to ensure not only the best value, but also the long-lasting durability of all the products,” he added. “No one expects to go another 75 years before an upgrade, although a decade or two would really help the local budget.”

One of the most significant morale-boosting upgrades to the athletic programs was to the facility’s locker and meeting rooms. Scranton Products, a Scranton, Pa.-based manufacturer of partitions and lockers made with high-density polyethylene (HDPE), supplied all-new bathroom partitions, lockers and athletic storage cubbies. The company worked directly with the project’s contractors and architects to produce the customized, low-maintenance athletic cubbies for the facility’s home and visiting team locker rooms.

In addition, the company also supplied partitions for several of the new restrooms as well as lockers for referee changing rooms. Given the high-impact requirements of the application, the school opted for the non-porous, HDPE surface Hiny Hiders partitions, which are naturally resistant to odors, mold and mildew.

Careful material selection also helped decrease certain health risks, as the HDPE partitions and lockers are resistant to certain strains of bacteria. Gym lockers tend to be dark, moist environments and can serve as an ideal breeding ground for staph infections and new strains of MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium that typically causes skin infections. The Greenguard Gold-certified Tufftec gym lockers were independently tested, and results showed that, after 24 hours, 98.4 percent of the MRSA bacterial died off the surface of HDPE plastic without the use of any cleaning solutions, according to David Casal, national director of sales and marketing for the Scranton Products.
 

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Located in the heart of Milwaukee’s downtown area, sustainability efforts and spatial constraints led the design team to place the $30 million, state-of-the-art Viets Field atop a 780-car, in-ground parking structure. The three-level parking structure reduced local asphalt surface parking lots by 6.9 acres.

Additional green goals resulted in the use of 100 percent LED lighting, making Viets Field one of the first in the country to use the energy-saving technology exclusively. Cree, an industry leader in LED lighting technology, supplied all lighting fixtures.

“We recognize that LED is the future of lighting and are committed to changing to LED campus-wide,” said Scott Ramlow, partner at project architect with Uihlein/Wilson Architects of Milwaukee and architect for Milwaukee School of Engineering, in a statement. “Cree was on the forefront of the technology we wanted, and brought to the table a series of products that best fit our needs.”

To maximize light distribution across Viets Field, MSOE installed Cree EdgeTM High Output Area fixtures on 70-foot poles across the field, according to a statement by the company. The luminaires also have the added benefit of delivering significant reductions in energy and maintenance costs while still providing high color quality.

“The light quality is much better than any other field I’ve seen before,” said Jon Jansen, project executive with the Brookfield, Wis.-based contractor Hunzinger Construction Company, in a statement. “When you’re watching people on the field, it’s much clearer and brighter.”

In addition to the outdoor lighting, Cree 304 SeriesTM parking structure LED luminaires were installed in the parking deck underneath the field, providing improved illumination while significantly reducing energy and maintenance costs, according to the company. Additional Cree LED luminaire models were installed throughout.

Constructing such a large facility in an urban environment, MSOE — an independent, non-profit university with a student population of roughly 2,600 — as well as the design and construction teams encountered some unique challenges.

“Whenever you design such a large structure in a downtown, urban setting, there is a complicated set of rules you have to follow,” Ramlow said in a statement. “We had to be very particular about photometrics and had restrictions from the city in terms of light spill, glare and light pollution. The spread and control of the light that we found with the Cree LED fixtures were much better than traditional lighting options.”

MSOE prioritized both energy usage and maintenance savings when evaluating its lighting choices for the 10,000-plus-square-foot athletic facility, according to Cree. By using 100 percent LED lighting, the university was able to reduce energy costs and consumption — in the parking deck alone, the university anticipates seeing energy usage savings of 200,000 kW-h annually — while also saving time and money earmarked for maintenance needs.

“The maintenance savings we anticipate will be a huge benefit to us,” said Tom Barsokine, director of facilities at MSOE, in a statement. “With 70-foot-high field lights, the savings from not having to get up that high to change bulbs will be a major plus. We can reduce the amount of equipment we needed to access the lighting to change the bulbs, since they don’t require nearly as much maintenance as other lighting options.”

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Global design firm DLR Group, which serves clients from 23 locations around the world, has led design efforts for a number of highly regarded collegiate sports facilities since 1987. The firm has in recent years completed the 16,000 seat Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb., which serves the University of Nebraska women’s and men’s basketball teams; TDECU football stadium for the University of Houston in Houston; PK Park baseball stadium at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore.; and Louisiana State University’s 8,550-seat Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., among others.

School Construction News spoke with DLR Group Design Principal Greg Garlock, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, and the firm’s National Sports Leader Don Barnum, AIA, about what it takes to design a sports facility that will keep athletes motivated and fans engaged, all while ensuring operational ease and financial success.

Q: What is the most common challenge you encounter during the design of a stadium or arena?

Barnum: One of the key drivers in designing a stadium or arena is how everybody watches the game. The seating bowl, the suites, loge boxes, club spaces — how all of that gets put together is the basis of our job and our responsibility. While that’s a challenge, it’s also an opportunity for great design. All of those premium products have a certain amount of revenue that they generate. We have to make sure that we can build the facility within the amount of money that it’s going to pay back, and that the return on investment (ROI) actually makes sense for the incorporation of those premium products.

Garlock: Another challenge is that many of these facilities become quite large. When we’re talking about a 50,000-seat football stadium or 12,000-seat arena, trying to balance the need to have a capacity like that and create an intimate atmosphere in which people feel close to the action is sometimes a challenge.

Then there’s the magnitude and size of some of these facilities in terms of how they will fit on a campus and not overwhelm their surroundings. We have to look at a number of options to make sure we’re achieving the best blend of all those factors.

Q: Have you noticed any recent design trends specific to collegiate stadiums and arenas?

Garlock: One thing that has really become very prevalent is that these facilities have much stronger connections to their communities, campuses and overall settings. It used to be that these tended to be standalone, inward-looking facilities that really didn’t connect to anything around them. That’s really been flipped completely around in the last several years where we as architects now look long and hard at the campus and community in terms of what is special about that place that we can incorporate in our design. It has created considerably better architecture and friendlier facilities, and made them much more unique and responsive to the owners’ needs.

Barnum: Additionally, what keeps growing is the appetite for premium products. The suites keep getting bigger and nicer, and every building has created some new idea that sets the quality of their product apart from their peers. The reason that’s important is that many universities are competing with other venues in and around their own cities. At the University of Houston, their football stadium is competing for disposable income with professional football and baseball stadiums and other arenas, so they have to be competitive not just with their fellow collegiate institutions but also within their marketplace.

Also, the whole audiovisual aspect of game entertainment is growing. The size of video boards is just unbelievable; they are truly entertainment devices. The game content can also be tied into personal devices as part of the overall entertainment package. The use of smartphones and other devices is driving the entertainment that is produced in the facility. How the fans interact with the event and the institution begins to inform the physical design of the facilities.

Garlock: Fans can just as easily watch the game on their 80-inch big screen television at home with air conditioning, drinks and food, so these facilities and institutions are trying to create experiences that draw people in. We’re helping them develop additional ways to keep it new and exciting, and to create these fantastic environments that people want to be a part of not just once but many times a season. That’s really a challenge for many universities and programs: To keep raising the bar in order to create the best game day experience possible.

Read more of this interview in the September/October issue of School Construction News.

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On Oct. 6, the district’s board of trustees approved the use of up to $2 million in bond funds to conduct the repairs. However, Allen ISD Superintendent Lance Hindt told the Dallas Morning News the funds would serve only as a “security blanket” for the district as to not slow the process. Instead, Pogue and PBK will foot the repair bill in its entirety.

Pogue Construction has offered to complete all of the necessary stadium repairs and PBK will assist the district’s experts with architectural services, according to an Oct. 7 statement issued by the district. Both firms have stated that the work will be done as “warranty work” and that they will not bill the school district. Additionally, all work will be directed and monitored independently by the Nelson Forensics and Datum Engineering.

Nelson Forensics was initially hired by the district in 2012 to examine the cracking only, but that contract was later expanded to review the entire 18,000-seat stadium. The firm identified a number of design, construction and engineering flaws primarily throughout the concourse framing, retaining walls, press box support columns and structure, single-story structures, the main scoreboard and the overall durability of the stadium, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Consultants from Nelson Engineering ultimately recommended that repairs be completed in six phases over a 10-month period. Datum Engineering designed those repairs and was assisted by Nelson. Though the district initially planned to issue bid requests for each repair phase, warranty and liability concerns have led to limited interest from outside firms, according to the district’s statement.

“Since the problem was first identified, the school district has had three goals in mind,” Hindt said. “We want to repair the stadium and return it to the condition our board and community expects, and we want the repairs to be completed in May 2015 so that Allen High School graduation can be held in Allen. Finally, we want the repairs to be done at no cost to the school district. This offer from Pogue and PBK meets all of those expectations.”

Closing the stadium has also forced the district to absorb unexpected costs and loss, for which district officials plan to seek reimbursement.

Despite all legal issues, Hindt added that both Pogue and PBK maintained “a constructive working relationship” with the school. “From the start they indicated their willingness to resolve any problems to our satisfaction and to cover all costs that are a result of the repairs and closure,” Hindt said.

“We are pleased with the progress being made and we support the agreement proposed by Pogue and PBK,” Louise Master, president of the Allen ISD Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “I am confident that the project will be well monitored and completed on schedule so that our students and community can once again enjoy using the facility.”

Work will begin with repairs to the stadium’s main scoreboard, and will move to the basement walls and main concourse structures. Repairs to the concourse itself are slated for the final phases, and partial demolition is not expected.

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ASU named HNTB Corp. of Kansas City, Mo. and Gould Evans of Phoenix to design to new facility, while joint venture of national firms Hunt Construction Group and Sundt Construction Inc., Hunt-Sundt, will serve as the project’s Construction Manager at Risk. All firms have considerable experience in sports building and education construction.

"We have reached an important milestone in the reinvention of Sun Devil Stadium," ASU Vice President for Athletics Ray Anderson said in a statement naming the project partners. "Today’s announcement means we are shifting gears and that the vision starts being transformed into concrete plans."

“Gould Evans has a wealth of experience working with ASU, and HNTB is simply one of the best firms in the country at stadium design,” added ASU’s University Architect, Edmundo Soltero. “We believe we have the team in place to do something extraordinary.”

“Arizona State University is setting benchmarks for innovation, excellence and sustainability and we are honored to be a part of this important project,” said Gerardo Prado, a principal with HNTB, in a statement. “Football stadiums are part of the collegiate experience and we look forward to playing a role in helping people see what a world-class university does with its public venues.”

Sundt Senior Vice President and Southwest District Manager Marty Hedlund is also confident in the experience Hunt-Sundt will bring to the table. “Our concrete expertise and the ability to self-perform within the design, planning and construction phases gave us a competitive advantage in the selection process,” said. “Self-performing the majority of the work allows us to not only keep costs down, but also maintain a high degree of quality control that aligns with our sustainable design and construction principals.”

According to a release issued by the university, while final design is just beginning, the project will focus on sustainability, technology and innovation. Enhancements in the stadium are expected to improve both the athlete and fan experiences, and include an expanded student section, a new concourse, better seating, more restrooms, improved concessions, a premiere video board and sound system, in-stadium technology, extensive accessibility improvements and an air-conditioned club, along with other amenities.

Demolition off specific areas within the existing the new stadium is currently underway, and new construction is expected to begin in early 2015, with construction being completed in 2017. The project will be conducted in phases while the Sun Devil football team continues to play its regular seasons in the stadium. Funding will come primarily from private donations, naming rights and revenue created by the development of a new nearby athletic facilities district.

Sun Devil Stadium was originally designed by Edward J. Varney Associates and constructed by F.H. Antrim Construction Company. Over the years the stadium has hosted numerous big-ticket events such as the Super Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl and NFL games, and has appeared in several movies. The last major renovation to iconic structure came in 1988 when 1,700 seats were added to bring the facility to a capacity of 71,706.

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