The Best Seats
In The House

As we’ve said many times before, upgrading outdated and unsafe bleachers is a big part of what we do and shows very little signs of slowing down.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.

Nestled along the shores of Lake Ontario in the province's beautiful Niagara Region lies the city of Grimsby. Retaining its small town charm despite being situated between Hamilton and Saint Catherine’s has been one of the major attractions for residents of this lovely town.

We were brought to the region to take a look at a project at one of the city's schools. Blessed Trinity Catholic Secondary School operates in Grimsby as part of the Niagara Catholic District School Board which serves over 21,000 students across the region. 

One of our recent projects brought us to beautiful Essa Township, located just southwest of the town of Barrie, Ontario.. Known for both its annual potato harvest and strong military presence thanks to nearby CFB Borden, the community approached us looking for solutions to some older bleachers at one of their parks.

Located at a busy local baseball diamond, the outdated bleachers were deemed unsafe as they no longer met the stringent specifications set out by today’s code requirements for bleacher seating. The township had plans of dismantling and disposing of the bleachers themselves and came to us for the plan with what to replace them with.

One of our recent projects brought us to the City of Oshawa where our attention was turned to one of the city’s most popular recreation complexes. The Civic Recreation Complex was the brainchild of Terry Kelly, a man who enjoyed local sports so much as a young immigrant from Hungary, that he spent much of his younger years fundraising and raising awareness for local athletic programming.

In 2014, the complex was named in his honor, more specifically Terry Kelly Field. Set to host upwards of 2,000 spectators, the field was the pinnacle of the recreation complex and local sports. As time has marched on, the elements had begun to wear down certain areas of the concrete grandstand and seating. The bench seating that was originally installed was now beginning to dip and sag and while facility managers made some temporary fixes along the way, it was time to work with a bleacher expert to solve the issues once and for all.

A locked out bleacher sat in the gymnasium at Napanee District Secondary School (NDSS), condemned due to a number of safety concerns when the phone call came in. It was our friends at the Limestone District School Board and they needed a solution ahead of the new school year.