Overview
Moore Expert and National Sports Market Leader, Bart Miller, partnered with VenuesNow analyzing roofing trends in the sports sector.
Roof retrofit is not a challenge unique to stadiums. Big league arenas are also seeing the need to strengthen existing roof structures in order to meet the demands of high-tech video boards and the ever-growing extravagance of entertainment productions.
“A decade ago, arena rooflines were designed with 120,000-pound rigging capacity. Now, many concert tours carry 200,000 pounds of equipment, and any rigging system under that number is not adequate for what’s going on in the entertainment industry, Miller said.
‘The loading is getting heavier and more widespread, distributed over a much larger area than it used to be,’ he said. ‘Some loads are dynamic and move around with stages and beams, and a lot of these existing roofs weren’t designed to accommodate these kinds of shows.’”
In an additional article, experts point out that many professional team owners are making roof retrofitting a top priority.
“‘The trend in any venue type right now is to make it as versatile and flexible and multipurpose as possible,’ said Bart Miller, a principal with Walter P Moore, a structural engineering firm specializing in developing roof structures for arenas and stadiums.
‘Team owners are trying to maximize their return on investment by increasing revenue opportunities and event dates,’ Miller said. ‘They’re doing anything they can to make their building accommodate events that might fit better in an indoor facility.’”
