A small company in Minneapolis plays a big role in keeping fans safe at sports facilities.
SC Railing Co., a 24-year-old firm with about 100 employees, specializes in producing protective railings for arenas and stadiums. Since 2006, SC Railing has completed jobs for about 25 venues covering major and minor league facilities, colleges and municipally owned buildings such as Citrus Bowl Stadium in Orlando, which is finishing up a $208 million renovation. Hometown clients include the Twins and Vikings.
The company, founded as Staging Concepts in 1990, started by building portable seating platforms for special events, and as ADA requirements kicked in over the years requiring railings, it was designing and manufacturing extended seating sections with aluminum railings.
Business evolved to the point that the company started building protective railings for entire venues, said Dan Stachel, SC Railing’s vice president.
All told, sports facilities account for 80 percent of its work. The company has no national competitors and bids against local subcontractors for business, Stachel said. For fiscal 2014, SC Railing expects to generate more than $35 million in revenue, its best year to date.
A big chunk of that revenue, $14 million, is tied to Levi’s Stadium. SC Railing produced 45,000 feet of railing for the San Francisco 49ers’ new facility, including 1,500 feet of drink rail space equipped with USB connections for mobile devices.
For Baylor University’s new McLane Stadium, SC Railing’s work extended from school President Ken Starr’s corner suite overlooking campus to the protective rails outside the stadium lining the “sailgating” area along the Brazos River.
“It’s been a good year from the railing standpoint,” Stachel said. Next year looks promising as well, he said, with a backlog of work that includes new arenas under construction for the Sacramento Kings and Edmonton Oilers.
SC Railing officials have seen firsthand the trend for developing more standing-room spaces by installing drink rails at sports venues, from the field-level clubs at NFL stadiums to upper decks in arenas.
In some cases, those SRO areas are designed late in the process after projects run out of money and drink rails become an economical way to create a fan destination, Stachel said.
In MLS, crowd behavior is driving the standing-room trend. The two newest stadiums, in San Jose and Orlando, are designed without seats in the supporters sections in the end zones because those fans tend to stand and cheer for the entire match.
For the Earthquakes, SC Railing produced the “safe standing” railing system modeled after European stadiums for their $70 million facility opening in March (SportsBusiness Journal, Oct. 6-12).
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Gold has brought the Penguins more green.
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> PURE GOLD: The Pittsburgh Penguins have seen a nice bump in merchandise sales after introducing a new third jersey called Pittsburgh Gold.
The team converted a team store at Consol Energy Center focusing on women’s merchandise into a full-scale retail space selling all kinds of apparel, including the black-and-gold jersey worn by the Pens in the early 1990s when they won two Stanley Cups.
Through the first four games of the 2014-15 season, Penguins retail provider Aramark had sold more than 1,100 jerseys, said David Peart, the team’s senior vice president of sales and service. Overall, arena retail sales are up 20 percent over last year.
In addition to revamping retail, the Penguins built two new bars on the main concourse and the upper deck, branded respectively for Jim Beam and Pittsburgh Brewing Co., maker of Iron City Beer.
For the first time since the arena opened five seasons ago, hockey fans on the lower level can buy a mixed drink from a full-service bar, at the Jim Beam bar on the south end of the building, Peart said. The cost for all of the upgrades was less than $100,000, he said.
Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.
