Lindner Center
Structural | Commercial, Sports/Entertainment
Structural
Commercial, Sports/Entertainment
Project Overview
The Lindner Family Tennis Center is home to the Western & Southern Open, the second-largest tennis tournament in the U.S. When Baker was engaged to build a new, five-floor grandstand totaling more than 41,000 square feet, the 18-week schedule was nonnegotiable; the grandstand had to open on time. The project presented multiple challenges, including that Baker’s scope of work fell within the height of winter. Extensive planning, the use of construction technologies, and reliance on prebuilt forms enabled Baker to complete the project in 17 weeks.
Client
Schumacher-Dugan
Location
Mason, OH
Size
41,395 sf
Completion
February 2018
Additional Project Details
In October 2017, Baker began work on a new grandstand at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio. Each year this tennis center hosts the Western & Southern Open, the second largest tennis tournament in the United States. The new grandstand is the facility’s crown jewel, providing luxury suites, box seats, press boxes, indoor stadium seating, and concessions.
The five-floor structure, which totals 41,395 square feet, presented several challenges. Primarily, the concrete structure had to be completed in 18 weeks during the height of winter. The facility needed to open by July 2018, making the concrete completion date nonnegotiable. As such, the Baker team relied heavily on modeling software tied to the concrete schedule for planning. This, combined with pre-building forms both in the shop and on site, brought the duration down to 17 weeks.
Another unique challenge was installing four raker beams crossed up with three girder beams 30 feet above ground in one pour totaling 275 cubic yards. In the course of three weeks, carpenter crews went to work forming the frame, much of which consisted of rakers setting on a 40-degree angle. During this time Titan Reinforcing successfully set three 80′-long post-tension beams weighing up to 16,000 pounds, which were pre-built in the yard and flown into place. To cap off the effort, place finish crews, along with every available hand on site, made the placement on a day when the temperature maxed out at 11 degrees.
A set of nine elevated cast-in-place risers offered yet another interesting aspect to the build. The 80′-wide by 18″-tall risers where cast in two placements of 60 cubic yards. To form the risers, an Efco riser system was chosen. This system, typically used for risers on grade, was successfully adapted to our elevated condition.
The more typical concrete elements were challenging in their own rights. The project has three 90′-tall core walls (two single cores and one double core). The final three lifts of these walls were completed on second shift in extremely harsh winter conditions. The first two elevated decks are structural pan slabs. All of the pans were pre-built in the shop from plywood and then labeled, bundled, and assembled in the field. Finally, on the east side of the project, three 80′-tall by 36″-diameter round columns were installed to accommodate an observation deck.