The Best Seats
In The House

It’s happening at community centres, sports fields, colleges, universities, and municipal properties across Canada and the United States. No, we aren’t talking about petty theft such as stolen cell phones and other small objects of value; we are talking about large-scale theft of valuable athletic equipment.

A project that was nearly 12 months in the making brought us back to beautiful Montreal, Quebec. Working closely with key stakeholders from the English Montreal School Board which services 41 elementary schools, 17 high schools, 7 adult education facilities, 6 vocational schools and 11 outreach schools on the island of Montreal, we were invited to a tender for some new seating.

The public tender outlined the details for four sections of prospective retractable bleacher sections for JFK High School located just north of the city’s downtown core.

Instead of the original four banks of seating that were to measure 16’ in length and have four rows of seating, our team looked at another possible solution for the school. Thinking a little outside of the box, our team went to tender instead with a proposed bid that outlined just two banks of retractable bleachers that would measure 32’ and would feature four rows of seating.

Committed to fostering a safe, supportive and stimulating environment for students, Ancaster District High School provides a variety of transitional programs and leadership opportunities for its students.

Located in what’s known as Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe, the school is located on the western fringe of the city of Hamilton, a port city located at the west end of Lake Ontario.

In addition to the school’s focus on academics, Ancaster High School also takes pride in its extensive athletic programming. Representing high school athletics as the Ancaster Royals, the school’s gymnasium serves as a hub not only for physical education but also for pride and recognition of the students’ athletic prowess.

The rugged beauty of the Canadian west is certainly something we will grow tired of any time soon and we were fortunate enough to experience it once again this year. Linking up with our partners at RecTec Industries located in picturesque Delta, British Columbia, they brought us a truly unique project at a local high school.

Located in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, this project brought us to Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School, also known as Tweedy by the local community. Established in the early 1940s, the school was founded on the principles of social responsibility and student achievement.

With enrollment numbers of well over 2,000 students, the school’s athletic department was looking not only for some outdoor bleacher seating for their sports field but also for a pair of highly customized spotter stands as well.

Anytime you are building something that is intended to host a large amount of people, safety should be at the forefront of your design plans. When it comes to bleacher seating, slipping is among the biggest and most important safety threats to account for during the design and manufacturing process.

Whether located indoors or outdoors, aluminum bleachers ultimately present certain safety hazards to the people who use them. For outside bleachers, with constant exposure to the elements and varying weather conditions, the risk for slippery surfaces is somewhat obvious. Wet surfaces, particularly those constructed of aluminum or steel, can quickly become hazards if not properly designed and treated. In fact, there are an estimated 8 million cases of injury related to slips and falls each year in the United States alone.

It's probably safe to say that we have all found ourselves sitting in some bleachers at one time or another in our lives. Sports and community events are deeply weaved into North American culture and cheering on our favourite team is a pastime we hold close to our hearts.

These large seating structures are found across sports fields, parks and recreational areas, and educational facilities. As our family members, teammates, classmates, friends and family hone their skills out on the field, ice or turf, we support them from the aluminum and steel bleachers that sit along the sidelines.

In addition to items such as handrails and guardrails, there is much that goes into the complex design of bleachers when it comes to safety. As nothing ruins an event more than an injury, our industry has spent decades perfecting our products to make them safer for all to use.

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.

Whether you are working on designing a new outdoor sports field, community park, greenspace or other athletic facility, there is so much that goes into the planning process.

When it comes to athletics, we are immediately drawn to what is required to play the game. Items such as soccer goals, football uprights, turf, field paint, etc. are usually the first to get squared away. Following closely behind is the determination as to what kind of seating will be required for the new location. While requirements definitely differ from location to location and are based on what prospective sport is scheduled to be played, most will settle on either a smaller 3-10 row bleacher structure or opt for a larger seating structure such as a complete grandstand.

The complementary amenities market is exploding as designers, planners and operators are looking for additional ways to make the most out of their facility. Below we have broken down the top three site amenities suited to accommodate your next bleacher seating purchase.

In the 40 years in which we have been in operation, our proudest accomplishment has been not only our rapid expansion in Canada and the US, but also into other foreign markets such as Kuwait, Barbados, and Europe among many others.

Once again, we were fortunate to have another international invitation to bring athletic equipment abroad, this time to the African nation of the Republic of Uganda. Located in east-central Africa in the Great Lakes region, the country is completely landlocked except for a portion of their border on Africa’s largest lake, Lake Victoria.

Near the end of 2016, our team was directly contacted by Richard Stanley from the 303 Development Group located in Staten Island, New York to discuss the possibility of a new multipurpose sports facility in Uganda. As a part of an expansion to the Allen VR Stanley Secondary School, the facility was in the process of planning a new indoor pavilion that would accommodate sports such as basketball, badminton, volleyball and many other events. The construction of such a facility would prove to be the first of its kind in the Republic of Uganda and one that had everyone very excited.

Sounds a bit crude, doesn’t it?

It’s a word we often use here in the industry and not surprisingly one that we often field a lot of questions about.

Given the apparent root of the word, many of those who have never heard it immediately think we are referring to either a rest room or a shortcut to one through a maze of aluminum seating. Truthfully, the latter isn’t terribly far off.

History of Vomitory

The original Latin translation from the word vomitorium was derived from vomere to be defined as “disgorging the spectators”. The definition became more defined through the mid 1700s when the first known use of vomitory was recorded and defined as “an entrance piercing the banks of seats of a theatre, amphitheater, or stadium” according to the good folks at Merriam-Webster.