Stadium design: It ain't over 'til opening day

By JON SAVELLE
Journal staff reporter

Thanks to the exploits of the immortal Babe Ruth, Yankee Stadium came to be known as "the house that Ruth built."

But Seattle's new ballpark will have to have a somewhat less mellifluous moniker: It's going to be the house that Kurt, Dennis and Ken -- and a thousand others -- will have built.

Those are not the names of ball players, but of the people who are actually creating the $450 million stadium now under construction at South Royal Brougham Way: Kurt Nordquist and his team at the engineering firm Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire; architect Dennis Forsyth and NBBJ; Ken Johnsen at the Public Facilities District; and, ultimately, some 30 contractors and 800 to 900 workers on the construction site itself.

For the construction crews the challenge is just beginning. But for the architects and engineers who have sprinted for the past year to bring the project to the construction stage, the building is already built -- on paper.

Five NBBJ team members will now move to the constructino site office: ``When you get 1,000 people out there working, they need answers fast,'' says Dennis Forsyth. Photo by Sky-Pix

At the Seattle architecture firm of NBBJ, which has designed the ballpark, the initial task was to define the project while at the same time assembling a team of consultants and contractors to carry it forward. This work began even before the firm interviewed with the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District, also known as the PFD, in the competition for the design contract.

As told by Forsyth, all that the architects knew about the project initially was that it was a ballpark for 45,000 fans, with amenities and a convertible top. No site had been selected, although there were 14 under consideration, and no environmental analyses of the sites had been done.

Dollar figures were similarly fuzzy.

"The PFD and the county were analyzing funding, so we never had a budget," Forsyth said. "Everybody had sorta-kinda figures, with a swing of $100 million each way."

Everybody also was in a big hurry, thanks to the Mariners' demands that the park be ready for opening day, 1999. The response at NBBJ was to establish a core team of about 25 people who would work on nothing but the stadium. Forsyth said the entire team, including five new hires, was assembled at the outset to ensure that all members were fully involved and informed.

This effort was helped tremendously by a simple expedient within NBBJ's design studio. The three leaders -- Forsyth, who directs the process; Rick Zieve, who heads the visual design team; and Ralph Belton, the building systems design lead -- all clustered their desks in the center of the group, with the others nearby. Communication is easy and continuous. In fact the team members rely on conversations being overheard as much as being able to speak to each other directly.

"It's hard to explain how valuable that is," Forsyth said.

But the firm went beyond that. To make sure everyone was reading the same sheet of music, NBBJ paid for the whole ballpark team to fly to Denver for a look at Coors Field. And it bought them all tickets to the Mariners' season opener.

"You get all 20-plus people to know the project," Forsyth said. "So in the working drawing phase, people know why. Now the entire team has a certain level of ability ... to make decisions fast."

One of their first tasks was site analysis for all potential sites. Attention quickly focused on the Royal Brougham site when it was proclaimed the PFD's first preference. Even so, however, there was a risk.

"We went into design development with a site that could turn on us," Forsyth said.

The next step was to involve the public and PFD in choosing design elements. It's a task that architects normally do quickly, but which takes time when lay people have to familiarize themselves with a vocabulary of forms and materials.

Team members depend on conversations being heard and overhead in the design studio NBBJ created for the stadium team.

Between mid-May and mid-June of 1996, the architects produced a schematic design for the entire ballpark.

"We got a very good response to the first schematic design and it helped enormously," Forsyth said.

It also helped maintain momentum. Although the team was enthusiastic and energized by the project, seven-day work weeks and a few all-nighters were an undeniable strain.

"It's amazing, but when it's yours, that's what creates that commitment," Forsyth said. "You lose that momentum on a project like this, and it starts to unravel. And it didn't unravel."

Some things did drag, however. The concessions, the clubs, the suites, the scoreboard -- all are elements that always come slowly. However, once the design development stage was reached and the general contractor/construction manager, Hunt/Kiewit, was on board, the design began to fall into place.

The ballpark itself presented no great problems from a design standpoint. The roof was a different matter. It became clear to NBBJ and Hunt/Kiewit that the size of the five-section roof, its likely cost and the lack of staging room for construction presented serious obstacles.

A simple design change, and some flexibility from the PFD and the Mariners, solved all three problems at once.

By skewing the roof, it could cover the field and stands more effectively with only three segments instead of five. And by allowing it to slightly overhang the east side of the park when stowed, its land requirements could be reduced, freeing up space for construction staging.

"You save money and you make it constructible," Forsyth said.

On the heels of that breakthrough came another insight. It was that the roof was essentially a separate construction project from the ballpark proper, and so did not need to be shoehorned into the same schedule. It made more sense to let the roof take its own tack, thereby avoiding a costly speedup to meet a deadline.

So the roof schedule was set free. But that lessened the pressure only slightly.

At the same time the roof was being redesigned, the team was starting on construction documents for demolition, pile driving and site utilities. And Forsyth said contracts were being drawn up while the funding was still being sorted out.

"It was a crazy time, as you can imagine," he said. "Then the Mariners decided to quit."

With the real possibility that the project would die, NBBJ and Streeter & Associates, which had been working with them, had to examine their options.

They took Christmas off.

The break came at a good time. The teams needed some rest, and, with stadium politics at their worst, it was the right moment to step back.

But not for long. A February deadline loomed for the construction drawings and the final model, which were to be presented at a public meeting with the PFD board. The architects scrambled to get their presentation ready in time.

"I knew we were going to make it ... when the (design) teams started to worry about what kind of music to use," Forsyth said.

At the PFD meeting the model attracted the spotlight. But Forsyth said the real work was in the 1,000 sheets of drawings that sat nearby, unnoticed.

Still to come are bids for the roof construction job, which Forsyth expects will attract teams of erectors, suppliers and fabricators.

As usual, clouds of doubt hang overhead. The bonds the county sold to finance the ballpark cannot be spent until the state Supreme Court rules on a legal challenge. Without the bond money, the PFD, designers and contractors are striving to do as much critical work as possible with the funds they've got.

Assuming the court rules in favor of the county, it may cost only a delay in the opening of the ballpark -- ironically, to a date in mid summer, perhaps close to the completion date for the roof.

The architects will be busy until then. Although the biggest crush is over, NBBJ is now engaged in designing tenant spaces, suites, garages, clubs, graphics and pedestrian walkways on the streets. And five team members will relocate to offices on the construction site.

"The knowledge is in these people's heads," Forsyth said. "If you have a problem, you go to the person who created the problem. When you get 1,000 people out there working, they need answers fast."

In surveying the progress made so far, Forsyth credits the can-do attitude and spirit of teamwork that has been demonstrated by the Mariners, the PFD, the public and the design team. Now he wants to see it develop among the construction contractors in the field.

"It's a matter of treating folks right, making sure they are a part of it, not just on the side," Forsyth said. "You get the guys who are building it to care about how it looks, and then you have a team.

"Some board members, they are just passionate about the quality of this building. The public too. I've gotten two or three dozen calls from the public, asking, 'Have you thought about this?' It's really kind of gratifying. Almost all the team members have made some kind of presentation (to the public). It's the kind of thing architects don't do very often."

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