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Facilities

Revolutionary roof slowly coming together at stadium

Cranes and roof supports are in full bloom on the floor of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The projected opening has been pushed to June 1, 2017.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
Photo by: HOLDER HUNT RUSSELL MOODY
Thirteen months before Mercedes-Benz Stadium opens, the site’s interior resembles a dizzying maze of giant steel parts pointing in all directions. Cranes and massive roof trusses jam the ground floor as trucks haul even more steel into the building.

For observers taking a hardhat tour, it’s a daunting sight, magnified by the mind-boggling numbers tied to sheer tonnage and roof span that project officials rattle off.

It’s all part of assembling the stadium’s cutting-edge retractable roof, the signature design element modeled after the oculus in the dome of the Pantheon in ancient Rome. Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank’s goal was to build an iconic facility that sets the city apart from other NFL markets, and he can point to the unique design of the roof as the crowning touch of the $1.4 billion development.

The roof construction has been slow going, though. Renderings and fly-through videos for the HOK-designed stadium showcase a roof with eight movable panels that open and close from a point in the center of the building at the 50-yard line. In engineering terms, it’s a simple motion, said Bill Johnson, HOK’s principal-in-charge of the project. But the complexity of the roof construction has pushed the stadium’s projected opening to June 1, 2017, three months later than first expected.

Mac McCoy, a senior vice president with HOK, worked on the NFL’s first retractable-roof stadium, NRG Stadium. “Without a doubt, this is the most complicated retractable roof out there. On the other side of the coin, the mechanization is pretty straightforward and simple. The biggest challenge we’re going to have when it all comes together is the sealing part of it, keeping it watertight.”

Adding to the roof’s complexity is the halo-shaped video board incorporated into its structure. On its own, the video board stands 58 feet tall and stretches 1,100 feet. Attaching the video board to the structure results in about 2 million pounds to support in the middle of the roof span, adding a whole host of challenges for just holding up the weight of the board alone, said Scott Jenkins,
Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s general manager.

“It’s gone slower than we’d like it to be, but it’s a very complicated roof,” Jenkins said. “There’s a lot of steel, and we’re getting it from a lot of places. But we’ve got incredible momentum right now. Between now and the end of summer, you’re going to see that whole fixed roof take shape … that’s the key focus

for the schedule right now. Once we get the fixed roof done, then we’ve got to mount that big halo board on the face of that, and then put the operable panels on top, too.”

All told, 100 trusses form the roof structure, some weighing more than 1.5 million pounds. In early May, 20 trusses had been installed by the Manitowoc 31000, one of the biggest cranes in the world.

Photos by: DON MURET / STAFF (4)

The general contractor, a joint venture of Holder Hunt Russell Moody, can’t start installing 25,000 fixed seats in the lower bowl until the ground floor is cleared of equipment, including four black steel towers supporting the roof pieces already in place.

“Until the whole roof gets laced together and assembled, it can’t support itself, so you have to temporarily shore it,” Jenkins said. “We have all these cranes, steel and shoring towers. You can see how busy it is on the field. We’ve got to get this stuff out of the way so we can build the lower bowl.”

The stadium’s exterior is taking shape. The 5,000-ton steel triangular panels forming the outer walls on the venue’s south side are designed to look like a falcon’s wing, said Erleen Hatfield, a partner with Buro Happold and structural engineer for the stadium’s roof.

The new building sits about 85 feet south of the Georgia Dome, the Falcons’ home since 1992. After the new stadium opens, the dome will be torn down and turned into a tailgate lot accommodating 850 vehicles. A new 600-space parking garage will also be built on the site. The intent is to create a college-style tailgate experience in the heart of SEC football country.

The upper deck on the east side provides fans with views of downtown Atlanta and Philips Arena. To create a mostly unobstructed view, the exterior wall in that space will be made of ETFE, the clear plastic material that’s part of the stadium’s roof structure.

But unlike the roof, which has multiple layers of ETFE to filter the sun’s rays, a single layer of ETFE, spanning 160,000 square feet and supported by steel cables, will be installed on the east side, providing a clearer view of the skyline than bulky steel beams supporting panes of glass would allow, Hatfield said.

It marks the first use of single-skin ETFE at a U.S. sports facility, she said. The lightweight, transparent material makes it easier to work with the complex geometry of the building and is less costly than ordering customized glass shapes.

“It’s been done in Europe. … I think it will show what we can do with single-skin ETFE in the U.S. like this, and there will be a lot of imitators after Falcons is built,” she said.

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