Civic Park Update

Aerial view of the Civic Park site by Meadowhawk Imagery (all other photos by me).

The phoenix-like rising of Civic Park from the ashes of historic Civic Stadium is rewarding the faith of the Eugene Civic Alliance (ECA) and its supporters in the promise of a new community sports and recreation venue. As I first wrote almost three years ago during the design phase, ECA envisions Civic Park providing much-needed facilities for sports and exercise in the heart of Eugene, an attractive place offering equitable access for children and others to improve health and fitness. The first phase of the project is well on its way toward completion next spring, so an update on its progress is in order.

The current scope underway includes the new fieldhouse and administrative offices for KIDSPORTS, a new all-weather synthetic turf field, a City-owned “pocket park,” a multimodal path through the site, and parking for visitors, coaches, and staff. Phase 2 of the project will include a 2500-seat grandstand, spectator concourse, press box, ticket office, as well as locker/shower facilities, restrooms, and equipment storage areas. Fundraising permitting, ECA hopes to roll ahead directly with Phase 2 as soon as the first phase opens.

Generally, construction is proceeding apace. The outline of the building is fully formed. The roof is going on, as are the insulating sheathing and weather-barrier at the walls. Subcontractors are roughing in the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems. The turf field is complete and already hosted ECA’s Day of Play last month when kids ages 6-12 had the opportunity to test their skills in multiple sports. Additional progress on the site is substantial, including the installation of various buried utilities and fine-grading of the pocket park and multimodal path.

The Chambers Construction team of Chris Boyum, Cassandra Dare, Jon Baugus, and Kris Vannett are doing an outstanding job of making Robertson/Sherwood/Architects look good. I learned early in my career about how dependent any project is upon a skilled and resourceful general contractor. I have a huge amount of respect for the job the GC does: seeing the big picture, orchestrating the performance of dozens of subcontractors and suppliers, ensuring project quality and conformance with the design intent, and maintaining jobsite safety. For Civic Park, Chambers also functions in a Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) capacity, providing ECA and our design team with critical cost reviews and constructability input from the earliest stages of design through the current construction period.

Interior of the gymnasium. Note the pre-engineered steel building frames (blue-grey components).

Civic Park has not been without its challenges. One of these has been the marriage of the KIDSPORTS building’s competing structural systems. The principal structural frame—supporting the enclosure over 21,500 square feet of gymnasium area—is a pre-engineered metal building system furnished by Butler Manufacturing Company. “Pre-engineered” means Butler’s in-house structural engineers designed the framing, as opposed to our design team’s structural engineer. Our engineer (Nathaniel Hardy of KPFF Consulting Engineers) designed the second structural system comprised of masonry bearing walls with steel beams and decking associated with the portion of the building devoted to offices, storage, and other ancillary spaces. The advantages of pre-engineered metal buildings are clear, most notably their lower cost (achieved through the most efficient and economical utilization of steel) and speed of fabrication and assembly; however, the lean nature of the Butler system assumes a greater tolerance for structural movement when subjected to lateral forces (wind or earthquakes) than can be endured by other type of structures.

The Butler Widespan Structural System is comprised of moment-resisting frames fabricated from plate steel and formed into “I” shapes through a manufacturing process. The frames can span large distances without intermediate supporting columns (96 feet in the case of our project). Each main frame column is pinned at its base. The loads imposed by lateral forces are transferred to the foundations through the unitary column/beam assembly but can significantly displace the frame at the roof level. Butler advised this displacement could be as much as three inches(!), which is significantly greater than the much more rigid load-bearing masonry system can assume. Consequently, we needed to anticipate the differential movement in our detailing of the building’s enclosing wall and roof assemblies.

Application of the adhesive between layers of the rigid roof insulation at the area of the single-ply membrane roof assembly.

Installation of the weatherproof barrier and sheet metal flashing in progress at the exterior wall.

3D model image prepared to assist the roofing and sheet metal subcontractors understand a movement joint detail.

Architecturally, the design of the KIDSPORTS building is deceptively simple. Our partners at Skylab Architecture (led by firm principal Jeff Kovel and senior architect Jamin Aasum) worked within the parameters set by a limited budget and the pre-engineered metal building system but were still able to include a dash of the firm’s signature angularity. The clearest evidence of Skylab’s mark will be the KIDSPORTS board room, which projects beyond the northwest corner of the otherwise prosaically rectilinear building. The board room spotlights the coming together of the competing structural systems: in addition to resolving the differences in expected deflection between the framing types, the projecting form also involves multiple enclosure systems (aluminum & glass curtain wall, metal rainscreen wall system, standing-seam metal roof, cantilevered sunshades, and a suspended metal soffit). We have spent a disproportionate amount of our design energy to carefully detail the varied junctures.

Exterior view of the west side of the future KIDSPORTS board room. Many different components will come together here, demanding a thorough understanding of how each will behave under gravity and lateral forces.

The coming weeks will see the addition of the building’s corrugated metal siding and the installation of the storefront and curtain wall systems. It’s all very exciting. As an architect there are few things more gratifying than the front-row seat I have from which to witness our team’s vision take shape. Along with everyone else involved with this greatly anticipated project, I look forward to seeing children and others happily using Civic Park, reaping the benefits of physical activity and healthy participation in organized sports.