Sears Centre, the 11,000-seat indoor arena in Hoffman Estates, is under roof and on track for its grand opening this fall.

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When completed, the horseshoe-shaped arena is expected to draw 750,000 visitors to 135 sporting, cultural and family events a year.

The United Hockey League and the National Lacrosse League are already booked.

The $60 million project is a cooperative venture between the municipality and owners Sears Roebuck & Co. and Ryan Cos. US Inc. Sears donated the land, and Ryan, a national design-build developer, is contributing design and construction services. The village is carrying the first mortgage through a bond issue.

"It's a great public-private partnership here," said Tim Hennelley, vice president of development in Naperville for Minneapolis-based Ryan.

Designed for the Prairie

The arena is located on 35 acres of Prairie Stone Business Park, immediately north of the Northwest Tollway (Interstate 90) and west of Illinois Route 59. It is a glass, steel and masonry structure that is fronted by a large plaza and surrounded by indigenous prairie landscape.

The 240,000-sq.-ft. building towers at about 70 ft. above grade, but the structure is not imposing. The event floor is recessed 24 ft. in the ground to conceal much of the building mass.

Four compact masonry towers, which house stairwells and operational services, are positioned around the perimeter and visually break up the overall scale. In addition, the facade is horizontally banded in progressive colors of masonry and steel, from dark at street level to light above.

"We were very concerned this didn't become a large, unsightly knob on the landscape," said Michael Roehr, architect and senior project designer with Ryan. "The building pretty much tiers like a wedding cake. All the tiering and changing of materials is meant to enhance the relationship to the ground. As it get higher, the building lightens and somewhat materializes into the sky."

The barrel-vaulted roof, which tapers on the rounded end of the horseshoe, softens the roofline. The entrance, dominated by a glass curtain wall, is on the rounded end of the horseshoe facing I-90. Situated at the southwest corner of the site, it also helps shield users from winter's fierce northerly winds.

Shaping the arena like a horseshoe, rather than the traditional oval configuration, is an emerging trend in arena design that eliminates the need to partition off valuable seating for back-of-event staging for concerts.

"It also lets you get away from the large, four-sided scoreboard in the middle, which is expensive and makes for awkward sightlines," Hennelley said. "We'll have a single scoreboard at the flat end of the horseshoe."

One of the short sides of the horseshoe is rounded and the other is flat.

Depending on the event, the seating capacity is equal to or smaller than Rosemont's Allstate Arena.

"We're smaller in hockey events because Allstate is a complete oval," Hennelley added. "When we bring concerts into town, the two arenas equal out because Allstate has to block out one side. The United Center trumps (in size) us both."

Ryan's Naperville office is serving as general contractor, and many of the subcontractors are playing dual roles as well. They and their experience are critical to the development and success of the final project, said James Herbst, division manager in Chicago of Ryan.

"All of the MEP subcontracts were issued on a design-build basis," he said. "When we take a proposal on, say, the electrical system, we never had that laid out completely.

We had general parameters and guidelines.

Chicago-based Hyre Electric Co., for example, is installing miles of wiring for sound, lighting, television transmission, food service, power backup, life safety and a parking lot.

"It's more of a concept where you trade ideas rather than dollars," said Jim Palm, executive vice president of Hyre. "They (Ryan) ask what do you think we should do?

How do you think we should approach this? It's a unique position for us to be in."

Making up Time

Ground was broken in July, and work is speeding along to meet the October deadline.

That's been the primary challenge. The original 18-month schedule was shortened several months due to approval delays.

On the plus side, wetland mitigation had been done along with previous park development, and the site offers plenty of room for staging. Last summer's drought helped immensely, but winter took back many of those gains. Crews are working seven days to catch up.

"Trying to pour concrete and lay steel through the winter was pretty tough," Herbst said.

"We had weeks we didn't get anything done because it was cold and windy and snowing."

The construction team took out 230,000 cu. yds. of dense dirt, which was readily taken by other developers in the area. It is putting in 8,152 tons of precast and 6,000 cu. yds. of concrete.

Nine steel trusses, totaling more than 710 tons, make up the roof structure. The six largest are 275 ft. long, requiring the Midwest's largest crawling crane and a couple dozen ironworkers to set them in place. The trusses weigh about 105 tons each.

Poplar Creek Memories

The concept of an entertainment venue is nothing new to Hoffman Estates.

The outdoor Poplar Creek Music Theater flourished back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it was controversial among neighboring communities because of the noise and traffic.

About 15 years ago, the village assembled several hundred acres, including the Poplar Creek site, which was demolished, for the development of Prairie Stone Business Park. Sears relocated its headquarters from downtown Chicago, and other companies moved in as well.

A few years ago, the village and Sears partnered to entice the Chicago Fire hockey team to the park with a yet-to-be-built stadium. The players ultimately headed for Bridgeview, but the idea for an arena in Prairie Stone remained. Enter Ryan, which has relationships with Sears in other parts of the country and experience developing an arena in the Quad Cities.

"All the stars lined up," said Bill McLeod, Hoffman Estates' mayor.

Over recent years, business and commercial enterprises, including a large shopping center, have picked up on the western edge of town. More development - including a hotel, water park and outdoor arena - is in the works.

It's time. Infrastructure improvements are ready to handle the traffic. Height restrictions and setbacks have been worked out with nearby municipalities, which are busy with their own developments.

"One of the challenges we have being so close to the regional mall of Woodfield is that we don't have a lot of the larger stores," McLeod said. "There was a time you couldn't buy a cup of coffee on the west side. People know they have to pay sales tax anyway. Why not buy in your own town?"

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