Designing Sporting Facilities By: Brian Lobmeyer P.E., S.E.

Designing Sporting Facilities By: Brian Lobmeyer P.E., S.E.

Designing Sporting Facilities By: Brian Lobmeyer P.E., S.E.

When someone mentions designing a basketball facility, you might think of a large arena, like Ball Arena in Denver. The reality is that designing smaller sports facilities like school gymnasiums, recreation centers, and community park facilities, are much more common. These smaller venues still present many of the same planning challenges as the giant venues.
We’ve found that one of the most useful traits in a sports facility is flexibility for both the intended uses today and the potential uses in the future. When you are in the concept phase of a sports facility (no matter how large), engage a structural engineer to help identify challenges as well as to determine the appropriate systems and limitations.
When Anchor is involved in the design of a sports venue, we ask questions to help guide structural design decisions for the unique facilities. Answers to these questions help us to determine live loading (a load that is not constant, but changes over time, and includes people, equipment, moveable seating/partitions, etc.), importance factors (the higher the occupancy the higher the design loads per the code) and hanging loading. The answers also help us determine the best systems for the structure.
Along with gathering typical information needed for structural projects, we also ask questions like the ones below:
  • What are all the intended uses of the space?
  • How many spectators will the facility hold?
  • What clear span do you need for an unobstructed view, and are there sight-line constraints?
  • How much equipment will be hanging from the roof, and what are the specs on the equipment?
  • What lighting fixtures are you using, and what is the desired layout?
  • Are the seats or other items fixed or mobile?
  • What are the constraints for flatness and performance of the floor?
Anchor has worked on gymnasiums that have wood floors over a crawl space, we have designed post-tensioned tennis courts to deal with expansive/mobile soils, and we designed roofs/walls to support a wide variety of hanging equipment such as basketball hoops, lighting systems, score boards, etc.
The sky is almost always the limit on what a client wants a sports facility to be capable of doing – we can help achieve as much of the wish list as possible while keeping in mind structural efficiencies and budget.

Pictured above is the Denver Bronco’s trophy case located at the UCHealth Training Center in Centennial, Colorado. This creation houses many important memories and triumphs that this NFL team has had over the years.
The engineering for the shelving used on this shinning and unique display was provided by some of the stellar engineers here at Anchor Engineering