The Best Seats
In The House

Heading into the great American Midwest, one of our recent projects landed us in the beautiful state of Missouri. Located roughly 50 miles outside of St. Louis, this project took us to the city of Union where, along with our partners at Carrol Seating, we were commissioned to design a truly unique bleacher.

As the city’s only secondary school, our project was anchored at Union High School, just west of the city. With one seating structure already in place on the home side of the school’s football field, the school district was looking to complement the existing bleacher with another. Given that the current bleacher was not terribly accessible for those in wheelchairs, the mandate of this project was to ensure that the next phase of seating would be completely ADA compliant, allowing all of their fan base access to the bleachers.

Aluminum bleachers are a popular option for sports and social events because they are convenient and cost efficient. However, due to ADA compliancy regulations, assembly areas in arenas, stadiums and event centres with a bleacher setup, must provide accommodations for wheelchairs and companion seating. This means the addition of not only seating spaces but also ramps and handrails to ensure safe and easy access.

With so many venues having been in existence for thirty years or more, there is a growing concern that these regulations cannot be met without incurring massive renovations and expenses. Some of the older seating designs that are most affected by the recent regulations include telescoping bleachers, fixed stadium seating, outdoor grandstands and auditorium seating.

Recently, we headed back to the Waterloo region of Ontario where just last year we aided the University of Waterloo in revamping their Columbia Icefields Centre.  The athletic complex, which opened in early 2014 came to our team when the need for a customized bleacher solution was required for the arena within the multi-use facility.

It was then our team installed a three-row arena bleacher system complete with extended rear decking for standing room viewing, contoured seating with numbering and custom vinyl end curtains complete with the University’s logo.