By Mark Rea

Houston's construction industry has continually bucked the economic downturn of the past couple of years with high-rise office towers, new highways and multi-million-dollar sports venues such as Minute Maid Park and Reliant Stadium.

As those facilities get set to host the 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and Super Bowl XXXVIII, respectively, they will be joined by the third jewel in Houston's professional sports arena crown: the Toyota Center.

The Houston office of Hunt Construction Group managed construction of the $220 million arena, which will replace Compaq Center as the new home for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association, the Houston Comets of the WNBA and the Houston Aeros of the American Hockey League.

Boasting 755,000 sq. ft., the facility seats 18,500 for basketball games, 17,800 for hockey contests and up to 19,300 for other events such as concerts. It is located in the heart of downtown Houston near the newly expanded George R. Brown Convention Center and the soon-to-be completed Hilton Americas hotel.

With nearly 100 different companies contracted to perform work on the arena - and the owner, Harris County and other organizations supplying input - coordination and collaboration were key components to the project. Many of the subcontractors on the job were Houston-area companies and more than 30 percent of those were minority or women-owned.

"It was extremely important to us that this project had a local appeal and local flavor during construction," said Hunt Construction project executive Mike Fratianni. "It was a goal of ours to involve as many local contractors in the Houston community and make sure they had the opportunity to work on what should be the last major sports venue built in this city for at least the next 25 or 30 years. That started from the top with Hunt's role as construction manager."

Two more Houston-based companies quickly signed on to the project. Tellepsen LP, one of the area's most established construction firms, won the contract to build the arena's 1-million-sq.-ft., 2,500-vehicle parking garage. The Trevino Group, one of the community's fastest-growing, Hispanic-owned construction companies, also provided project superintendents as well as MWBE coordinator Gilbert De La Cruz.

Official groundbreaking took place July 21, 2001, on four downtown blocks that had previously been the site of various small businesses, a fire station and a Houston Light & Power distribution control office.

All structures were demolished and foundations excavated. Because several of the businesses had used different types of chemicals over the years, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality handled oversight of the removal of all materials, including the remediation process that was employed before actual construction could begin. Under TCEQ controls, all excavated material removed from the site during the entire 24-month construction period was classified as Class 2 environmental.

Getting Started

Actual construction began in September 2001 with excavation of more than 300,000 cu. yds. of dirt, which was removed and recycled for industrial-only sites. Crews dug approximately 32 ft. below grade for the arena footprint, something unusual for the Houston area.

"From a construction standpoint, perhaps the most remarkable aspect is the depth of the arena into the ground," Fratianni said. "For this facility to be more than 32 ft. below street level is remarkable. Most of these arenas are not nearly that deep, and couple that with the fact that this is Houston with a rather shallow water table and the depth is quite unique."

Because Houston is a designated hurricane zone, the arena project had to be designed with an elaborate dewatering system complete with a series of redundant floodgates and an extensive network of drainage and pumps. In conjunction with Houston-based project engineer Walter P. Moore & Associates Inc., the dewatering system was designed and installed by two other area companies: Ulrich Engineers Inc. and Griffin Dewatering Southwest LLC.

"This is one of the most extensive dewatering systems I have ever seen," said project architect Scott Watkins of Houston-based Morris Architects. "This facility will stay dry from existing groundwater and any street-level flooding that may occur. The system added a bit to the overall project cost, but I think it will be worth every penny."

The arena's exterior sits atop approximately 450 drilled piers, which featured average diameters of 30 in. W&W Foundation Inc. of Houston handled drilling of the piers to depths of between 60 ft. and 80 ft. The piers are capped with a 4-by 4-ft. concrete beam at grade level to support the building.

Once drilling was completed, crews made sure the dewatering system was protected with sand and gravel layers beneath a mud slab.

"We had to make everything underneath the floor able to drain water into sump pumps, so there is a lot of perforated pipe put in along with sand and gravel layers," said Jim McLain, Hunt Construction project manager. "Atop those layers is the mud slab, and then we poured a finished 8-in. slab of concrete."

Baker Concrete Construction Co. of Houston handled the tunnel and ramp areas of the project while the Carrollton and Houston offices of Capform Inc. took care of the superstructure and slabs. Another Houston firm - Sterling Steel - furnished the reinforcing steel for the project.

Separate Superstructures

Two separate superstructures comprise the Toyota Center. One is reinforced concrete, the other steel. Pours for the concrete portion of the facility began in February 2002 and were completed seven months later.

Also during that period, concrete was poured for the raker beams that support the upper seat decks and for smaller rakers that support the two levels of private suites.
Raker beams feature a unique stair-step effect that eventually bears the weight of the precast concrete seating bowl.

Corpus Christi-based Heldenfels Enterprises Inc. supplied and installed the structural precast concrete.

Structural steel erection began in October under the supervision of Havens/FabArc of Kansas City, Mo. The 175,000-sq.-ft. arena roof is supported by four steel supercolumns, situated on the main concourse of the arena about 35 ft. above the event level.

"The supercolumns were a driving design feature of the building," Fratianni said. "The owners very much wanted the supercolumns structure to be a major feature in the seating bowl."

Each supercolumn rises 70 ft. to support two huge steel supertrusses, which crisscross the arena diagonally just below the roof.

"Each supertruss is 35 ft. deep and supports numerous smaller trusses, which run parallel to the event level," said Hunt Construction project engineer Paul Wojciechowski. "The smaller trusses support the steel roof joists. The roof of the arena is comprised of steel deck covered with insulation, sealed with a single-ply membrane known as Sarnafil."

McLain, who participated in construction of the Louisiana Superdome in the mid-1970s for Hunt Construction, said the supertrusses and design of the roof system are unique. "It's a much more lightweight structure for a roof system than you would typically see on an arena like this," he added. "In many ways, this structure resembles the Superdome and, even before that, the Astrodome.

"And even though the roof structures for those facilities are obviously much larger than this arena - I can still remember the area of the Superdome roof covers nine acres - the similarities are there. The major difference here is the weight. With Walter P. Moore's design, those steel supercolumns and supertrusses allow for a much more lightweight roof, which translates into many things, including reduced construction costs."

Designers also placed the facility's cooling tower atop the adjacent parking structure in order to keep the clean, unobstructed lines of the arena's domelike roof.

"That was something else that was unusual," McLain said. "The cooling tower for the arena is not directly attached to the arena itself. But again, it was ingenuous design because we could bring all of the piping up through those large areas between the service and main concourse levels and then tie them into the cooling tower on the parking garage through the roof of the skybridge."

Despite the intricacy of the erection, the project utilized only one tower crane. "But we employed an army of crawler cranes," McLain said. "For instance, when the concrete was being poured, more than a half-dozen cranes were being used inside the circumference of the arena and several more were outside the perimeter for erection of the architectural precast."

The arena features six different levels: service, event, main concourse, mezzanine, suite level and upper concourse. The public will enter at the main concourse level through the lobby on the arena's northwest corner.

Suites Above And Below

Since the event floor is located below the main concourse level, the Toyota Center features the latest innovation in luxury suites: 14 courtside bunker suites.

The suites are tucked below the seating bowl on the event level and patrons can use their own staircases to move between their seats at courtside and the suites, which are equipped with state-of-the-art electronics.

The courtside suites are exclusively served by a bunker suite lounge and feature their own restroom facilities.

In addition to those suites, there are 82 luxury suites divided between two of the arena's upper levels. Additionally, three large party suites were included to allow small businesses or individuals to purchase premium seating.

The workforce hit a peak of 650 in March and remained at that level for the next four months. Then at the beginning of July, the sprint toward the Sept. 1 completion began.
"We divided the finish-out part of the project into 12 separate sectors," McLain said.
"That was because we need to get some sectors completed before others at the owner's request. For example, the Rockets wanted to begin installing furniture in some of their administrative offices on Aug. 1, so we concentrated our efforts there."

The Rockets will kick off their inaugural season in the Toyota Center beginning in October. Since moving to Houston from San Diego in 1971, the team enjoyed 15 straight winning seasons from 1985 to 1999 and back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995. But the franchise has struggled recently, posting losing records in two of its last four seasons and falling short of the Western Conference playoffs in 2003 despite an improved 43-39 record.

With new head coach Jeff Van Gundy and such young NBA stars as Steve Francis and Yao Ming, the Rockets hope their move into a new arena will benefit them the way a similar move helped the San Antonio Spurs, who walked off with the 2002-03 league championship trophy in their first season in the SBC Center.

Not that the Comets or Aeros can't fill the new arena with championship banners of their own. The Comets won four consecutive WNBA titles from 1997-2000 and the Aeros will head into their new home as defending Calder Cup champions of the AHL.