When it comes to designing and installing custom bleachers, the market has made it abundantly clear that we have become one of the front-runners in the space. While we certainly do a lot of work in the great outdoors with our outdoor bleachers and stunning grandstands, we’ve long been working indoors as well.
In addition to telescopic bleachers, working inside Canada’s arenas is another area in which we truly flourish. Having been able to work on a number of these exciting and truly Canadian projects over the past few years, we’ve become known as a company that can get bleacher seating done, even in the tightest of spaces.
Given the unique design of indoor spaces such as hockey rinks and arenas, these jobs come with their own set of unique challenges. Working alongside key stakeholders from these organizations, we are often faced with how to fit a new code-compliant bleacher into a tight space all while ensuring that spectator sightlines remain above the dasher boards and clearly focused on the action on the ice.
To answer this particular question, we lean on our design team to create a custom arena bleacher with a custom rise (seat height) in order to achieve that goal. And that is exactly what took place on one of our most recent projects over at the University of Guelph.
Looking to upgrade the seating experience in the school’s hockey rink, they came to us with specific measurements and allotted space and left the rest up to us. After assessing the space, our team suggested three individual bleachers - each of which being slightly different in size and configuration.
As we stated above, sightlines were of chief concern and that’s where our design team started. By designing the bleachers with a custom 16” rise and a 32” closed deck, we were able to get spectator sightlines right where we wanted them. Now that we’d taken care of the best view possible from the stands, our team had to make them fit. Given that the arena had a number of steel columns, our team had to take into account the required custom notch-outs that would allow the seating structures to fit along the back wall in the arena.
Once that was taken care of, we began the manufacturing process and later installed one 18’ long bleacher, a 28’ bleacher and a 38’ long bleacher. Each one of these seating solutions were equipped with our customized contoured seat modules for added comfort along with our fully-closed decking to keep garbage and other debris from falling below the bleachers.
Just ahead of this year’s hockey season, fans looking to cheer on the Guelph Gryphons now have a safe, comfortable and code-compliant bleacher solution, adding to their formidable home ice advantage.