The Best Seats
In The House

Any time we get called back to a campus we already know well (and is right in our backyard), it feels like coming home. That's always the case at the University of Ottawa, where we were brought in early on the revitalization of Matt Anthony Field project and tasked with replacing aging sideline seating and adding a purpose-built platform.

Founded in 1848 as the College of Bytown, the University of Ottawa is the world’s largest English-French bilingual university. Sitting in the heart of Canada’s capital, it has grown from a modest wooden college into one of the country’s most respected research and educational institutions. Its athletic teams wear garnet and grey as the Ottawa Gee-Gees, a name that grew out of those school colours more than a century ago.

Matt Anthony Field, which was built back in 2001 outside the Minto Sports Complex on the main campus, is named for Matt Anthony — a former Ottawa Rough Rider who later coached the Gee-Gees. It is home to Gee-Gees women’s soccer and women’s rugby, hosts men’s rugby, and doubles as a practice venue for football.

This project sits inside a long-standing relationship between us and this storied institution. When Gee-Gees Field opened at Lees Campus in 2013, our team was tapped to design and build the stadium grandstands that still seat the football crowd today. Not long after that, we returned to that same site to engineer and install a custom netting barrier along the highway-facing perimeter, and we have also supported Gee-Gees basketball with a full system replacement after an existing unit was condemned.

Matt Anthony Field is the next chapter of that work.

With the existing bleachers along the south sideline reaching the end of their service life, the university wanted them replaced with new seating that would put as many spectators as possible on the sidelines, all while meeting every current code for spectator seating in Ontario.

Our sales team attended the initial site visit and completed a full take-off, measuring the available footprint in detail. From those measurements, our design and engineering department produced drawings for three new bleachers and a custom elevated viewing platform for scorekeepers, scouts, and coaching staff.

The solution consisted of three banks of 5-row outdoor bleachers, each with integrated barrier-free seating areas and companion seats. Pairing standard rows with dedicated accessible positions, the new seating solution now includes room for 720 spectators and an additional 16 barrier-free seating areas.

Alongside the stands, the university asked for a custom elevated viewing platform. We answered that call by installing a structure measuring 24 feet long by 6 feet wide and sitting 6 feet above the field surface, giving scorekeepers, scouts, and coaches a clean, dedicated workspace above the crowd. It is the same family of elevated work products we build for press boxes and viewing platforms at fields and stadiums across the country.

Planning a field seating upgrade?

If your campus, municipality, or club is looking at replacing end-of-life outdoor stands, we will meet the project where it actually is. Sometimes that starts with boots on the sideline. Sometimes it starts with drawings, photos, and a tight set of measurements. Either way, we engineer to the applicable code no matter where that might be, and we build right here in Canada.

Request a quote and our team will start with the same site visit.

Go Gee-Gees.