Take Me Out to the Ball Game: Metal plays mulitple positions in new Yankee Stadium experience
by Jonathan McGaha | 31 March 2010 12:00 am
Most people who are baseball fans either love or hate the New York Yankees. As one of the most marquee franchises in all of professional sports, everything the Yankees do is high profile and that brings equal parts adoration and ire. You do not, however, have to like the team, or even baseball, to appreciate the new Yankee Stadium in Bronx, N.Y., designedby Kansas City, Mo.-based Populous.
The second most expensive stadium in the world cost $1.5 billion to construct. It opened in April 2009 and has already hosted a World Series. As baseball begins again, it seems an ideal time to look at the variety of roles metal played in the construction of the iconic building,which combines the tradition of the old Yankee Stadium with 21st century design.
If you are on your way to or from the game (the parking garage and metro stop feature metal) or almost anywhere in or around the stadium, you will notice metal’s contribution to the experience.
Around the Horn
One of the upgrades of the new stadium,as compared to the old one, is a more open and airy feeling. This is partly accomplished through the Great Hall, a large-scale foyer to the stadium, where the main entrances, elevators and vendors are located.
Throughout the Great Hall, you will find stainless-steel woven mesh from GKD-USA, Cambridge, Md. The walls around the elevator banks are clad with GKD’s Omega 1505 PC. Above the elevator doors, GKD used a media blasting process to etch the Yankees’ “NY” logo into its panels.
GKD’s flexible Tigris material was used on the upper walls of the Great Hall. A glass ceiling had already been installed when the panels were put in, so GKD created a special attachment for its lifting equipment that allowed the panels to be put in place without going in over the top with a crane.
Tigris mesh panels also outfitted two stair towers, running from the lower level all the way to the top of the stadium.
“We did a special weave on some panels,” said Leon Shockley, director of field operations for GKD. “We made the weave a little bit loose and that allowed us to hang it from the top structure, and we were able to rack it. The architect wanted the vertical cables to follow the angle of the stair structure and yet keep the horizontal rods in a perfect horizontal position.”
A total of 33,000 square feet (3,066 m2)of GKD’s 100 percent recyclable mesh went into the interior and exterior of the stadium. It was chosen not only for its ease of maintenance and extended lifetime performance, but for its unique design that contributes to the pinstripe look of the New York Yankees.
Meanwhile, approximately 120,000 square feet (11,148 m2) of Formawall Dimension Series 2-inch Vertical and Concealed Fastener Profiles IW 10-A Profile Series Vertical panels from CENTRIA, Moon Township, Pa., were used throughout the stadium.
According Walter Kakareko, president of All Seasons Siding Inc., Lynbrook, N.Y., the installer for the CENTRIA products, the Formawall Dimension Series panels in Bright Silver outfitted the exterior walls of the stadium behind the outfield and press box; and Formawall panels in Midnight Blue clad the exterior of a museum and restaurant inside the ballpark. The Concealed Fastener Profiles in Bright Silver were used on the stadium’s security booths, concession stands and retail stores.
The CENTRIA panels were chosen in large part for their performance and sustainability, said Vitaliy Kedrus, CENTRIA’s New York City district sales manager. They are Cradle to Cradle Silver certified, the galvanized steel is recyclable and the foam can be repurposed.
“That’s why we won the World Series, because of our panels,” joked Kedrus. “We contributed expertise in metal panels, we worked with the architect to choose the proper system and we supplied very knowledgeable factory-trained installers. I think i came out beautiful. It looks very impressive and different.”
Safe!
Any time you build a facility of this size that will have to accommodate more than 50,000 people during events, safety has to be a concern Metal helped in this area too. McNICHOLS Co., Tampa, Fla., is familiar with the special needs of sports stadiums, having supplied specialty metal to many collegiate and professional sports stadiums, including Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals, and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, home to the Florida Gators.
At the new Yankee Stadium, with its open air design, metal guard rails with infill panels abound, especially along balcony edges that overlook seating levels below. Similarly, guardrails that border the stadium’s pedestrian walkways and stair steps are replete with infill panels to protect the constant stream of fans entering and exiting their seats.
While safety was a primary concern, field visibility from the 52,325 seats was right up there with protecting exuberant fans when it came to selecting the infill panels for the railing system. Aesthetics and durability played a significant role, too, as the railings figure prominently in the stadium design, virtually looping the circumference of the field.
The style selected for Yankee Stadium—McNICHOLS’ open metal wire mesh in 0.192-inch (5-mm) wire diameter with a 3- by 1-inch (76- by 25-mm) rectangular opening and flattop/plain weave—worked well for high traffic areas that needed secure and unobstructed views. The carbon steel mesh was framed into panels of varying sizes and hot-dip galvanized for corrosion protection after fabrication. Besides providing protective partitions for seating sections, the wire mesh panels are used as borders for wheelchair areas located at intervals along the pedestrian walkways.
One other small but critical application for the wire mesh that did not exist in the old Yankee Stadium: cup holders affixed along the walkways.
Getting to the Game
Metal continues to be part of the new Yankee Stadium experience—even outside the stadium itself—depending on how you travel to the game.
Construction and operation of the 164th Street Garage, which has 190 spaces and sits adjacent to the stadium, needed to be cost effective and efficient. A Cambridge Parkade architectural mesh system from Cambridge Architectural, Cambridge, Md., clad the building’s façade, and the chosen pattern managed to adequately cover the structure’s exterior while at the same time allowing enough airflow to negate the need for additional building systems— ultimately saving the project team money.
“Cambridge’s architectural mesh pattern allows enough passage of air to make a sprinkler system unnecessary, all while acting as an effective façade for the garage,” said Michael Hanrahan, senior associate of Trenton, N.J.-based Clarke Caton Hintz, the architect of the parking garage. “The finished product is a sleek, beautiful, modern mesh that catches the sun during the day and reflects colored light at night.”
The Parkade system was fabricated with mesh in Cambridge’s Braid pattern, which features large-scaled, flexible open weaves that shade and screen structures including facades, parking garages and pavilions.
For fans arriving via the MTA Metro-North Train Station at 153th Street, they will be protected under standing-seam canopies and roofs made from Englert Series 1300 profile from Englert Inc., Perth Amboy, N.J. Englert’s T-panel with batten caps shades a double-S curve to the roof over the east stairway of the complex. The T-panels allow seam sections to snap on rather than the panels being machine locked together.
The new station included new platforms, a pedestrian bridge, stairs and mezzanines on either side of the bridge, and elevators capped by Englert Series 1300 material. A Forest Green color was chosen to match other station roofs along the Hudson Line of the railroad. Many stations along the Hudson Line have Englert standing-seam metal roofs.For more on the complex construction of the new Yankee Stadium, visit www.metalconstructionnews.com.
Turner Construction, New York, was the construction manager on the project. To learn more about the metal products mentioned in the article, visit:
www.centria.com;
www.gkdusa.com;
www.mcnichols.com;
www.cambridgearchitectural.com
Photo courtesy Engelert www.englertinc.com.
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