Two Big Ten Projects

The Is Have it In Stadium Redos

by Craig Barner

The Is have it when it comes to renovations of collegiate football stadiums in the Midwest.

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The arenas at Indiana University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are being renovated. In addition to the schools’ shared first letter, some of the project parallels are remarkable.

Both universities are in the Big Ten athletic conference. The names of their arenas are identical, Memorial Stadium, though the stadium in Champaign originally opened in 1923 and the one in Bloomington, Ind., in 1960.

And, both schools are traditionally weak in football but went to bowls this season, signaling a possible resurgence of their programs. Indiana headed to the Insight Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., on Dec. 31 and lost to Oklahoma State University, and Illinois battled the University of Southern California Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., also losing.

Both schools are integrating improved facilities within their stadiums to help their football programs stay competitive in a big-money collegiate sport. Most significantly, both chose designs that tried to strike a middle ground between honoring tradition while pushing beyond it.

And both the Fighting Illini and Hoosiers played their home games this fall in their respective stadiums while construction activity was under way.

One major difference in the two projects is their cost. The scope of the Illinois project, at $121 million, outweighs the Indiana project, which is only one element of a $55 million plan in Bloomington involving four projects overall.

Integrating Illinois’ Tower

At Illinois, a 400-ft-long, 80-ft-wide, three-tier press box/hospitality facility made up of about 1,700 tons of steel is being built in the west stands and within the existing stadium perimeter, says Warren Hood, associate director of athletics. A delicate task was preserving the brick perimeter formed in part by 100 limestone columns creating a colonnade; the east stands also have a colonnade of 100 columns.

“The No. 1 issue was to weave the new structure through the existing building, not touch the colonnade or any other historic element and have the existing building stand up while we were doing it,” says Tim Cahill, national design director of Kansas City, Mo.-based HNTB Corp., the architect.

The tower will match the appropriate height of the previous press box and will hold several things, including the 1,100-seat Colonnades Club, the Memorial Stadium Pavilion, press box and 46 suites, of which 42 will be rented and the rest used by the university.

As a result of the work within the perimeter, the existing press box was dismantled to create room. In addition, rows 44 through 75 on the lower level and rows 18 through 40 in the balcony were removed, also for the space.

“We lost 12,000 seats on the west side,” Hood adds. “We weren’t able to seat anyone in the balcony this year.” After the project is done, the stadium will accommodate 62,000 fans, down from 70,000.

Another thorny element was dismantling the ends of the existing press box but keeping the center so it could be used this past season, says Kurt Stahl, project manager in the Indianapolis office of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Hunt Construction Group, a partner in a joint venture with Chicago-based Mota Construction Co. Inc. as the construction manager. The remaining section of the press box was removed after the season.

The removal of seating and other structures involved placing temporary cross bracing on the ground level to fortify the stands, taking out the precast risers and cutting with torches the steel raker beams. Waste was not dropped to the Great West Hall in part to guard against the possibility of damaging the columns but was lifted out via crane.

“Hundreds and hundreds of cu yds” of waste were removed in containers, Stahl says.

Earlier in the project, caissons have been installed to support the tower, and steel has already been constructed in the Great West Hall to form the tower base. The tower’s above-ground skeleton should start to emerge within the stands soon.

The aesthetic vision involved retaining the historic elements—the existing ramp towers in the stadium’s corners, in addition to the colonnades—but letting the design look forward, too, says HNTB’s Cahill.

On the field side, glass will frame the new tower to create a “clean, simple aesthetic” that will set a contrast with the stadium’s mostly brick cladding, he says. But on the tower’s campus-facing side, tradition was respected by duplicating the placement of the colonnade’s vertical lines in the spacing of the tower’s windows. Another bow to tradition was made by framing the tower’s sides in brick.

Other elements of the overall project include the relocation of the scoreboard from the north to south end zone. New 5,000-seat stands were constructed on the north, and below them will be a weight room, training area for the football team and mezzanine level.

On the east side, work included a modernized Great East Hall and increased concession and restroom facilities.

Multiple shifts have been implemented to ensure progress, and the stadium lights have been turned on at night so work could be done. The project is expected to be finished in August—just in time to see if the Illini can repeat the success of their 2007 campaign.

Old and New

Like its counterpart to the west, the design of Memorial Stadium project in Bloomington, Ind., is yoking together traditional design with some forward-looking touches.

Jeff Milliken, an architect with Indianapolis-based Ratio Architects Inc., the designer of the Indiana project, says, “The overall building form fits with the Collegiate Gothic style of the campus, but the details of how that form is put together use the technology of today.”

The project’s major element is a not-yet-started 130,000-sq-ft, four-story building in the north end zone to complete the bowl, Milliken says. The space will house coaches’ offices, meeting areas for the football program, Hall of Honor and athletic administration offices. Bleachers with a small amount of seating have been demolished.

“The building is a bridge that connects the east and west stands of the stadium,” Milliken says. “But it also connects the past and future of IU athletics.”

Stylistically, the structure’s design will mirror the campus’ predominantly Gothic architecture but with modern twists.

As a result, the cast-in-place concrete building with architectural precast cladding features entry arches and tower elements in its corners, but they are framed mostly in glass to give them a contemporary appearance. Also mimicking the Gothic style, eight 9-ft-tall images of athletes will be cast into precast blocks that mimic the look of the limestone dressing most of the campus buildings.

Modern technology took over because computer modeling was used to cast and transfer the images of athletes into precast panels, Milliken says.

Another modern element is that high-performance glazing with a material called aerogel, Milliken says. Aerogel is a low-density material derived from gel in which the liquid component has been replaced with gas. The aerogel layer is sandwiched between two glazing layers.

“It’s a highly efficient insulating material,” he adds. “We don’t have concerns about condensation and will eliminate a lot of radiant heat.”

The schedule is “fluid,” but the project should be done in 2009, Milliken says. In mid-December, the construction manager had not been formally announced. University officials did not return calls.

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