Article published September 27, 2009
Architects, builders confronted, conquered multiple challenges
By HOMER BRICKEY
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE
There are a lot of features in the new Lucas County Arena in downtown Toledo that hockey fans and concert-goers will like, and there’s a reason for that.
A lot of planning went into the design, including coordinating interior design with the colors of professional teams that will play there — the Toledo Walleye hockey team and the Toledo Bullfrogs arena football team. “The fans are going to like the coziness,” said Joe Napoli, president of the Walleye, the Bullfrogs, and the Toledo Mud Hens baseball team.
It also will have an openness to it, he said, with places to watch events without sitting in ticketed seats. “Claustrophobia will not happen here.”
Building the 82-foot-high complex in a setting surrounded by tall buildings, and on a relatively fast track, required planning. The same team of contractor and architects had designed and built a block away Fifth Third Field, home of the Toledo Mud Hens baseball team.
“The site was definitely a challenge,” said Tom Tingle, vice president and national director of sports architecture for HNTB Architecture Inc. of Kansas City, Mo. “The tight [quarters] and the tight schedule left no room for error. We had to plan ahead, and we couldn’t afford a misstep.”
The construction site left little room for “lay down” of building materials, said Tim Meyer, project manager for the general contractor, Lathrop Co., the Maumee firm that also built Fifth Third Field.
Unlike most construction sites, this one had sparse room for storing steel, brick, piping, and other materials, so a just-in-time system of delivery of construction parts was employed.
Another problem, Mr. Meyer said, was the arena’s 207-foot-long roof trusses over the ice. “We had to get [components] fabricated and shipped here and put together half at a time.”
The design and construction team came to this project with much experience. Lathrop has built many landmark structures in its 114-year history, including the Owens Corning world headquarters in downtown Toledo, the Owens-Illinois Inc. headquarters in Perrysburg, and the Shops at Fallen Timbers in Maumee.
HNTB, the architect of record, has designed dozens of sports facilities in addition to Fifth Third Field, including NFL venues such as Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City and Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. It is part of HNTB Corp., which has designed bridges nationwide, including the Veterans’ Glass City Skyway in Toledo.
Among buildings designed by the Collaborative Inc., the associate architect for the arena, is the new Penta Career Center in Perrysburg Township.
Poggemeyer Design Group in Bowling Green, which did the structural and site engineering and interior design for the arena, has worked on a number of university structures in this area.
“There are two types of customers you want to keep happy — ticketholders and show promoters,” said Ray Micham, a partner in the Collaborative, which largely did the exterior design, including the entryways.
“If a building has a reputation of being easy to use for promoters, you can capture more events. … The arena is very user-friendly and a great fan experience. I don’t think there’s a bad seat in the house.”
A lot of attention, he said, was paid to amenities for show promoters who might use the arena — which seats 8,200 for concerts and about 7,600 for hockey. Design includes such touches as extensive stage rigging, a catwalk system for access to lighting, and platforms for spotlights, as well as a number of acoustic dampers to cut down on excessive reverberation.
Architects designed a secure loading area for shows, hidden from the street. “If it’s a famous band, you don’t want groupies to be able to get at those guys,” Mr. Micham said.
For fans and concert-goers, there are plenty of large glass windows, strategically placed for views looking up Huron Street and across Jefferson Avenue.
“We wanted to keep downtown Toledo on display,” Mr. Micham said. “The project is really all about downtown revitalization.”
There’s also a banquet area, called the Aquarium, that can open up to an outdoor “beer garden” of sorts. And there’s an enclosed walkway linking the arena to several nearby parking garages.
The complex, whose main entrance is at Huron and Jefferson, has 267,000 square feet and measures 402 feet long and 280 feet wide from outside. It has nine men’s, 13 women’s, and three “family” restrooms. It has 10 concessions stands and two souvenir shops. It has three floors: the ice floor, the concourse level (which is elevated from the street level), and the club/suite level.
Early on, the decision was made to put the ice surface at street level and the seating above. Planners concluded that, if the ice/stage surface had been sunken, it would complicate construction and make it more difficult for show promoters to truck in lighting and sound systems.
Four buildings were demolished to make room for the arena, including the former Esquire Theatre. During the excavation, workers unearthed parts of the old steam-piping system that had been used to heat downtown buildings until the 1980s.
The hole left by excavation required a staggering 95,000 tons of stone, about 4,500 truckloads, to fill. “An added benefit of that stone is a good base for the concrete slab [under the ice] to keep it from cracking,” said Phil Whaley, one of the principal owners of Poggemeyer.
The arena, he explained, is supported on 174 reinforced concrete caissons, each from four to eight feet in diameter, that go down 70 feet underground.
“One of the most challenging aspects of the project from our perspective was … a large [14-foot-diameter] combined sewer [and overflow] tunnel which lies 40 feet below … We had to avoid hitting it with our caissons.”
And because of the construction schedule, he added, “much of the superstructure was constructed prior to the building-shell design being completed and bid out.”
The amount of materials needed to build the structure is mind-boggling: 1,600 tons of steel, 22,300 cubic yards of concrete (weighing 44,000 tons), 10 miles of chilled water tubing to keep the ice frozen, and five miles of heat tubing underneath the 8-inch-thick concrete slab to prevent frost damage.
After nearly two years of construction, the arena is done, and the architects believe it fits in well with the urban environment.
The brick-and-stone exterior picks up on the architecture of nearby buildings, Mr. Micham said, such as the old Commodore Perry and Secor hotels.
And HNTB’s Mr. Tingle said, “The arena has a nice scale and it fits in well with the very rich architecture of downtown Toledo.”
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