Photo courtesy of St. John's University

By Elaine S. Silver
The author, a freelance writer, lives in the Hudson
River Valley and reports frequently for Design•Build
and other publications.

When the 2001 championship St. John’s University men’s soccer team first set foot on their new field last September, they could be forgiven for feeling that they had received some extra blessings. After all, the idea for the new soccer stadium may have had divine intervention.

When Maxine and Jerome Belson traveled to Vatican City in 1996 with the then NCAA Division 1 soccer national champions to present a replica of their trophy to the Pope, the couple got an earful about players’ injuries from running around on the existing artificial turf. "It was my wife’s idea to change the turf," says Belson, a successful real estate developer who has built 50,000 residential units in New York City. When all was said and done, the Belsons donated about $6 million for the $9-million project.

The injuries spurred a series of events that led to the university’s first design-build contract for an innovative project that fields the first soccer stadium ever built over a parking deck and one of the first stadiums approved by the international soccer federation FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association, Zurich) with a new generation of injury-limiting artificial turf. The stadium is home to the men’s and women’s soccer programs and seats about 2,300 Red Storm fans.

Space Exploration

The unusual design and the design-build contract were both driven by the university’s need for more parking. St. John’s University sits in the middle of the New York City borough of Queens. Space on the campus is precious and parking for the 2,000 resident students and 6,000 commuter students cannot be disrupted or left under construction for very long.

The original idea for putting the soccer field on top of a garage came from Arquitectonica (ARQ), New York City. "We originally looked at creating the field and building a parking garage next to it," says Robert Fatovic, vice-president of ARQ Sports. But that was an expensive and expansive solution. ARQ then came up with its innovative solution. "There are parking decks with tennis courts on top, but not a stadium," says Fatovic. The solution had other advantages, too. It put the stadium on grade with a nearby baseball field, creating an elegant sports corner of the campus. A sports center building now under construction will link the two sites.

"The board of trustees approved the concept in July 2001," says Kevin D. Louie, executive director of design and construction at St. John’s. "Then we asked The Thornton-Tomasetti Group Inc. and Urbitran Associates to come up with design solutions." Both New York City design firms had long-term relationships with the university and had designed other parking garages on the campus. At this point, the project was planned as a traditional design-bid-build, but "we did pay them $10,000 each for their proposals, so we knew we were getting a real design plan and not just a marketing proposal," Louie says.

Innovative garage/stadium was a solution dictated by tight site and schedule, sports injuries and need for parking. (Photo courtesy of St. John's University)

Urbitran won the competition by coming in on budget by leveraging the terrain. "Urbitran came up with the scheme of putting 80% of the deck on the precast inverted-Ts and the other 20% on the grade of the hill, so we didn’t have to do as much excavation work and had less of a deck that we need to build and purchase," says Louie. In the end, St. John’s made aselection based on the complete package consisting of the cost and the design, and the integration of the two.    

Critical Constraints

Lawrence M. Rosenbloom, Uribitran senior vice president, first suggested using a design-build contract. He believed that design-build was a natural choice for this project because the university wanted the stadium ready in less than a year, the parking was critical and cost effectiveness was crucial to the schedule. "We could finish the entire design and get the bids back and find out that we were over budget and then have to do it over and have the clock ticking against us," says Rosenbloom. "So we took on the responsibility to do design-build." Urbitran’s contract was for a guaranteed maximum price and it teamed with HRH Construction LLC, New York City.

The design-build arrangement paid off. The precast order went out three months after Urbitran was selected. "If we had done the process in the traditional way, we would not have been in a position to even order the material until we had gone through the documents and the bids" says Anthony Rodriquez Pacheco, vice president of facilities and construction at St. John’s University. "We would not have made the September 2002 deadline."

Urbitran took the overall dimensions of the platform, which was dictated by the soccer stadium requirements, and created a column grid that maximized the parking below at 300 spaces. St. John’s athletic department was responsible for selecting the turf, but had not yet made a decision. So, Urbitran determined the maximum load for both artificial turf and natural grass. It came up with a schematic structural plan and used it when it met with the precaster. This was enough to put together the shop drawings. "This way, we established the largest subcontractor cost and finalized the contract with the university," says Rosenbloom. The order for the precast components was submitted in December 2001, although the design for the stadium was not completed until May 2002.

Belsons (top picture, left center) donated funds and helped Red Storm dedicate new stadium (Photo courtesy of St. John's University)

The stadium design continued to be the responsibility of ARQ under a separate contract with St. John’s. However, ARQ acted as a team member to the Urbitran and HRH design-build team. Adding to the partnership, St. John’s athletic department had to choose, specify and order the turf, bleachers, lights, flagpoles and scoreboards. Rosenbloom says the design-build arrangement saved the university five months–the time it took the precast fabricator to create and deliver the parking deck support system–to finalize the stadium design and decide on the amenities.

Picking the right turf was a priority. Fortunately a material called FieldTurf became available around that time that played like grass, says Erin McDonnell, associate athletic director. It is a new concept in artificial turf that combines sand and rubber in a product that looks and feels like grass. The technology spurred a change in the rules set by FIFA, which governs soccer around the world. St. John’s is one of only six facilities in North America to have a FIFA-approved artificial surface. And it’s almost maintenance free.

A waterproof membrane covers the deck of the 90,000-sq-ft single- level parking garage, followed by an asphalt layer to level it out, a drainage system, and 2 in. of ground-up Nike brand sneakers that looks and feels like soil and the "grass."

The innovative design solutions mirrored the flexibility needed by the owner to deal with this new way of doing business. "There was not a complete set of documents to work under. We were creating product as we were going along. It was always an evolving process," Louie says.

And it was hard to tell who was who. "It did take time to figure out the new relationships and keeping the characters straight," says Pacheco. "The staff is used to dealing with general contractors or construction managers. Now we have these [the design-builders] on the other side of the table sitting with us. One of the issues was: Who do we talk to? Are we talking to the prime holder of the contract who happens to be the design professional or are we talking to the contractor?"

In the end, what mattered was getting the job got done on time and on budget. On Sept. 21, 2002 St. John’s dedicated the new Belson Stadium with the 2001 Big East Champion Red Storm Men’s soccer team and the Belsons on the field.

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