A $1-billion home for the New York Islanders ice hockey team on Long Island is skating hard toward completion in time for the next National Hockey League season in December. The journey for the 19,000-seat UBS Arena, which broke ground in September 2019, was on a fast track when the project team faced a major obstacle—a nearly 50-day work stoppage from late March to late May last year under a COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
The ability to recover from that setback—and stay on schedule—has become a defining feature of the project, with the team adjusting design, staging, logistics and staffing elements in response to the pandemic as work advances on the 700,000-sq-ft structure at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y., in Nassau County, near the New York City borough of Queens.
Oak View Group项目管理高级副总裁Paul Young说：“我们确实在不得不吸收的时间里确实处于一个不错的位置。”据媒体报道，凭借合作伙伴斯特林股票和岛民团队，它正在开发整个13亿美元的项目，其中包括竞技场（价值10亿美元），以及零售和酒店建筑群。扬说：“这对我们来说是一个艰难的时期，只是不知道它将持续多久。”
竞技场项目受益于几个因素：温和的2019 - 2020年冬季，平稳的基础工作，早期的钢制勃起工作以及为工作期间的第一波浪潮创造了预制和钢铁的设施。他说：“当联盟关闭被抬起时，我们在几天之内就恢复了运行。”
不过,project team—led by AECOM Hunt-Barton Malow as joint venture construction manager, Populous as architect and Thornton Tomasetti as structural engineer—had to make quick adjustments, such as hiring pandemic response staff, setting up temperature check tents, adding mask and social distance requirements, and creating touchless entrances, Young says. There is also a projectwide contact tracing system that triggers targeted quarantines if individuals on a crew test positive for the virus, he says.
“The system is working well. We’ve not had a major shutdown or a major outbreak since” implementation, Young says, adding that “productivity has kept us in a position to say to the NHL, ‘Yeah, we can be ready.’”
The design team also began to update food service operations, patron circulation paths and MEP and filtration systems with measures to limit virus spread in the completed facility—such as added doors and entry-egress routes, says Jason Carmello, a Populous principal. “We are in constant analysis of how the pandemic will shape not only this building but also future buildings,” he says.
As the team finishes roof and exterior close-in work this month, the shift to interior MEP and finish trades will require new COVID-battling strategies, Young says. The team is considering staggered start times, day- and night-shift work and “chasing” schedules to rotate crews by site quadrants. “All are on the table as potential options,” he says.
Site Reset
The arena had already experienced a major change well before the pandemic—a move to Belmont Park in 2018, which occurred after project architects had already completed design development plans on an original site at Willetts Point in Queens next to the Citi Field baseball stadium. “We did a lot of massaging to incorporate the arena into a new site, with new surroundings,” says Kurt Amundsen, a senior principal at Populous and the arena’s project manager.
所有权团队在赢得了由帝国国家发展局（Empire State Development Agency）赞助的2017年提案过程中赢得2017年提案过程后的行动，以在贝尔蒙特公园（Belmont Park）著名的赛马赛道旁边开发一个43英亩的国有包裹。获胜的竞标还计划制作340,000平方英尺的零售和用餐综合体，200间客房和其他便利设施，这些酒店将于2022年与新的长岛火车站一起开始建设。
除曲棍球优先的身份外，竞技场还将每年举办150场音乐会，家庭表演和体育赛事，使用精美的窗帘，灵活的座位，可伸缩的记分牌和其他功能，以转移不同活动。Bars, lounges, terraces and other signature spaces are all over the arena’s footprint, including a “fan zone” special section, one 11,000-sq-ft club overlooking the seating bowl, another club straddling the tunnel that players use to enter the main floor, private suites and a lounge with opera box-style seating.
Music and Hockey First
One of the project’s central goals was to serve as both a “first rate” sporting venue and a concert space of the same quality, Young says. That meant stepping up the entertainment logistics side, with loading docks on the same level as the event floor and freight elevators to bring stagehands up into the trusses, he says.
Young说：“而且有多个卡车码头，因此它们可以比20年前建立的一些历史悠久的竞技场更快地加载。”快速加载的能力是关键。Amundsen说：“将不乏想要扮演这座建筑物的主要巡回演出。”“当他们能够进来并尽快离开时，这是他们的口袋里的钱。”
The loading dock also has a shallow ramp sloping down to the event level 15 ft below ground, letting the design add a covered, heated marshalling yard and parking area, according to Carmello. “In this climate,” he says, “that’s a differentiation factor.”
工程团队还设计了该结构，以支持扬声器，视频和其他设备用于巡回演出的大规模操作负荷，如今，这将悬挂超过200,000磅的装备，用于平均表演，高达500,000磅的大型娱乐行业活动。桑顿·托马塞蒂（Thornton Tomasetti）的高级校长。
“Rigging loads have at least doubled from what they were even 10 to 15 years ago,” he says. “That has changed the way we build the roof structures to increase the pure vertical load capacity.”
The design also aimed for optimal acoustics, often overlooked in sports-first arenas, Young says. “We limited the number of glass railings and things that can reflect sound back,” he says. “And we’ve included sound baffling up in the rafters and on certain walls. We’re excited that as a music venue, it will feel intimate and sound great, whereas it will have an awesome, interactive experience for an Islanders game.”
建筑物大
The Belmont Park site offered flat, sandy ground, allowing the team to use spread footings instead of a pile foundation, Storm says.
The land also never housed major structures, adds Eric Lumpkin, an associate at Thornton Tomasetti and lead project engineer. “It was virgin ground, with tremendous load-bearing capacity,” he says. “It’s a huge site, which gave contractors ample room for laydown and staging and let them do open cut excavation.”
But switching sites also posed schedule challenges, leading the team to optimize steel design and procurement, Storm says. The engineering firm built its own Tekla model of the steel structure, allowing it to fully coordinate construction drawings, connection design and fabrication models, which saved time by providing more information to bidders and by using the same technology as detailers. “That sped up the process tremendously,” Storm says.
The team also placed vertical and lateral bracing for structural and seismic systems in each of the four main elevator and stair cores, where it wouldn’t interfere with core building functions, Lumpkin says.
The arena also has a signature column-free section —its 350-ft by 460-ft-long roof span over the main seating bowl that also supports lighting, HVAC systems and scoreboard elements, Storm says.
The construction team and its steel erector, J.C. Steel, installed four main T1 trusses in late summer for the roof. “The multiple aerial lifts [had] ironworkers in the baskets bolting up infill steel beams,” says William Racky, vice president of field operations at AECOM Hunt.
The team also used extensive digital modeling technology and LiDAR scanning to map out installation and track as-built progress for steel erection and placement of the precast seating, says Russell Dalton, AECOM’s BIM director for the Americas.
“By having geometric certainty, we can set these pieces in place the right way the first time,” he says. “When we place the precast seating, we can verify the breakers are spot on and there are no concrete shims and shavings.”
该团队去年夏天在碗里使用了多个起重机进行钢和座椅勃起，并在10月初的结构上脱颖而出。Racky说，由于迫在眉睫，重点将转移到MEP和Interiors团队。
外墙将继续进行一些工作，并设有砖砌预制，玻璃，檐篷，窗帘墙和其他功能。Carmello说，外部结构还包括主和上部的大型室外露台。
The design aims to harken back to the original Madison Square Garden with brick and a heavily articulated aesthetic, Amundsen says. “There’s a very urban look and feel to that vernacular,” he says.
High-Tech Experiences
The finished arena is aiming for LEED 4.0 certification, with measures focused on renewable energy, reduced water and electricity consumption, and goals to become a zero waste facility. It also will feature extensive landscaping to fit in with the Belmont site, “keeping as many trees as we can,” Young says.
Young说，竞技场还将采用一系列高级通信技术，并具有内部分布式天线系统和Wi-Fi网络。他说，一个例子是所谓的抢购技术，它将允许顾客更快地与食品和饮料供应商互动并体验较短的线条。
The facility will also house 5G speed communications technology embedded within the seating bowl itself through thousands of connections, wiring and antennas, allowing patrons to connect via smartphones during interactive portions of events, Lumpkin says. That’s because traditional antennas hung from railings and catwalks wouldn’t be close enough to the users.
Such intricate systems seem ideal for vast footprints like those in an arena. “The more technology advancements that are made, the more physical space you need in these types of buildings,” Amundsen says. “As devices get smaller, the equipment and real estate needed to support them increases.”
