The Best Seats
In The House

While we work with a lot of existing parks, schools and communities, we always love being a part of a brand new development as well. Being brought in early on a new project always marks an exciting opportunity for our organization and for the project we are working on.

After the announcement of a new ball diamond in Truro, Nova Scotia, our team was tapped to help design the new bleacher seating that will soon be placed in the new development. The complete development comprises two locations.

Located in Dieppe, New Brunswick in eastern Canada, École Anna-Malenfant is an all-french school that proudly preserves the region’s francophone and Acadian heritage through both academics and athletics. Serving as  home to nearly 700 students from kindergarten to grade five, the school’s gymnasium is a hub for sports, assemblies and other gatherings.

As with many established schools and facilities, upgrading outdated equipment is always top of mind. In the case of École Anna-Malenfant, we were brought in to help replace and install some new indoor bleachers for the school’s gymnasium. The existing telescopic bleacher system was deemed no longer safe for operation and so we were contacted to come up with a solution that could continue to grow with the school.

In what has been a project for over three years now, we were once again called upon by our friends at the City of Cornwall to help them continue their goal of upgrading the bleacher seating at many of their city parks. What kicked off in 2021 with three new 5-row bleachers in three separate parks, continued in 2022 with three new parks added to the list. In an effort to keep things rolling in the right direction, it was time earlier this year to upgrade another park’s seating structures.

In one of our largest telescopic bleacher jobs to feature our ground-breaking GameDay GraFX bleacher logos, this project had our whole team excited. Located at All Saints High School in Kanata, Ontario, we were brought in to provide an updated solution to some outdated athletic infrastructure.

An old set of wooden retractable bleachers in the gymnasium that had been manually operated, had fallen below the safety standards dictated by local and national building code requirements. We were therefore invited to visit the site to assess the situation. After taking detailed measurements, we got to work designing a new seating solution for one of the area’s largest high schools. With existing ‘pocket walls’, or walls that are designed to accommodate bleachers, the new bleachers would also have to fit within the existing dimensions.

As we’ve said many times before, upgrading outdated and unsafe bleachers is a big part of what we do and shows very little signs of slowing down. Given that these seating structures are often located outdoors, years of abuse from the elements and spectators alike in time, turns to ruin.

Add in updated safety code requirements and you’ve got a situation in which schools, municipalities and other facilities are beginning to scramble to get all of their bleacher seating up to speed. 

The growth of soccer here in North America has been remarkable, to say the least. The sport’s popularity has exploded in both Canada and the United States over the past two decades and shows no signs of slowing down.

As more state-of-the-art pitches, fields and complexes continue to be designed and built, each one seems to be more impressive than the last. 

We were fortunate to have been brought in on the construction side of one such complex in the beautiful Waterloo area of Ontario. The Cambridge Soccer Centre has been the brainchild of the family-oriented city of Cambridge. After having developed the plans for the project in 2018, it officially got off the ground in 2021, garnering plenty of excitement for the future of soccer in the southwestern Ontario city.

Purchasing any sort of large equipment can be a daunting task, particularly if you have very little experience working with the piece of equipment you’ve been tasked with sourcing. Generally speaking, bleachers tend to fall into this category of equipment that the general public doesn’t have a lot of experience with.

For the majority of us, purchasing something such as bleachers is something that might happen every once and a while (although for some, it becomes an on-going thing). As such, product education is something that becomes very important when making purchasing decisions. 

When it comes to bleachers, it is important to get the basics right, hence why we put together this quick reference guide outlining the ideal bleacher purchasing process.

Follow along as we go start-to-finish through every step of the bleacher buying process and hopefully shed some light on the product, the people that build them and how to streamline the process for your organization moving forward.

Located in the rural west-end of the city of Ottawa is West Carleton Secondary School. Set on over 100 acres of land, the school serves as home to nearly 1,500 students, focusing both on academics and athletics. Known as the West Carleton Wolves, the school’s athletic department features sports teams in hockey, basketball, badminton, curling and volleyball. 

After a massive expansion to accommodate more students in 2018, West Carleton has continued to focus on improvements. One particular improvement took place in the school’s gymnasium, where an outdated set of bleachers was “locked out” rendering it unsafe and barely usable.

One of our recent projects had us working closely alongside our partners at Seating Safety Solutions back in the beautiful Tar Heel state. Working out of Liberty, North Carolina, Seating Safety Solutions has developed a reputation for being the best in bleacher seating throughout both North and South Carolina.

This unique project involved an existing bleacher structure at a school we had worked at previously. As is the case with many older seating structures across the country, this bleacher was still in great condition, but lacked ramps and barrier-free seating areas and was without any allowances for accessible seating. With more inclusive seating structures becoming the norm, many are turning to us to help them add on to existing structures in an effort to make them ADA compliant. Ensuring that all spectators can enjoy the action on the field is an initiative we can all get behind and one we take seriously.

Offering a bit of closure to an earlier post about this specific project, we’re happy to announce that the final installation was completed and the event was a huge success. Working closely with key stakeholders at Ottawa’s RA Centre, we were brought onboard to help close out the Centre’s new Curling Centre of Excellence.