Award

The Legends Centre by Bill Armstrong hen The Legends Centre officially opened in October 2012 the event was part of a larger ceremony that celebrated the former town of Warman becoming Saskatchewan's newest city. The combination of events was fitting because The Legends Centre is one component of a tightly-integrated facility that is becoming the recreational and cultural hub of a community located just 20-kilometres north of Saskatoon. The Centre includes a 1,120-seat ice arena, a leisure ice surface, 12 dressing rooms, two multi-purpose gymnasia that each house three 65- by 100-foot courts, a fitness centre and other multi-purpose rooms. The gymnasia host a variety of minor sports groups, including soccer, volleyball and cheerleading. The city also hosts dropin volleyball, soccer, Frisbee, badminton and basketball programs throughout the week. A fitness studio, a sport rehab clinic and a sporting goods store are located on the main floor, while a yogurt bar has joined the concession offerings on the second level. Other amenities in the attached Warman Community Middle School, which opens at the beginning of the 2013/14 school year, include a 450-seat performing arts centre and a new joint community library formed by the City, the school division and the Wheatland Regional Library. The integrated facility is a product of "a great working relationship" between the City of Warman and the Prairie Spirit School Division (PSSD), which includes a facility joint-use agreement that has been in place for several years. "The agreement allows the City and the PSSD to use each other's facilities when they are not being used by the owner, at no W 70/    october 2013 p70-73The Legends_Centre Square Place.indd 70 cost," says Paul McGonigal, recreation and community services manager. "This arrangement gives residents access to gym time at the local elementary and high schools, while students have access to arena and sport field time at city facilities. Partnering with the PSSD means we don't have to double up on constructing facilities, giving youth more opportunities for recreational experiences outside school hours, and many avenues for our residents to get out and get active." The origin of The Legends Centre dates back to a pre-election announcement in 2007, when the provincial government launched a fund that offered communities money to begin construction projects that were shovelready, or close to it. The city knew it needed more recreational and multi-purpose spaces, and with design assistance from aodbt Architecture + Interior Design the community quickly developed a proposal and received $2.5 million to commence the project. "The objective was to make really effective use of the limited resources that were available initially," says Charles Olfert, aodbt lead architect on the project. "This meant constructing a cost-effective giant box that would create as much recreational space as possible, and maintain maximum flexibility for the future. The exterior shell is a simple pre-engineered metal building that allowed most of the financial resources to be allocated to the interior program spaces." The very sophisticated interconnected heat recovery and ice battery systems serving the Centre and the school were designed for maximum efficiency. Murdoch MacPherson of MacPherson Engineering, the mechanical consultant on the project, explains that the Centre is equipped with a Cimco Eco-Chill ammonia high-efficiency ice plant that produces chilled brine to maintain the ice surface, and chilled glycol that provides air conditioning for the Centre and the school. The system includes an ice-battery thermal storage system that is charged up by the ice plant during low-use periods and supplements the ice plant during periods of high use. MacPherson adds that waste heat from the ice plant is the primary heat source for radiant in-slab heating throughout the Centre and keeps the ground underneath the ice surface from freezing. A high-efficiency condensing boiler plant in The Legends Centre provides high-temperature hydronic heating to ventilation unit coils and entrance heaters in both the Centre and the school. It also serves as a supplemental heat source for the in-slab system. Brock Dergousoff, project manager for general contractor Stuart Olson Dominion Construction Ltd., adds that heat captured from ice-making also provides warm water for showers, washrooms, the ice resurface room and the snow melt pit. Because the two systems were designed to be integral to one another, significant programming and scheduling were required to ensure the two systems were constructed and operated as intended. While the Centre and the school have separate electrical systems, PWA Engineering designed and installed the networked fire alarm control panels for each facility so that they communicate with each other and act as one complete fire alarm system. Alena Sherwood, PWA electrical design engineer, adds courtesy city of warman that since the school does not have a gym, the paging system in the school was extended into The Legends Centre so that teachers and students can hear it when they are using the Centre's facilities. Dergousoff adds that hard work by the electrical and mechanical trades ensured the two systems were fully integrated in time for the beginning of the school year. Major payoffs include lower capital costs by avoiding system duplication, lower space requirements for mechanical equipment and reduced operating costs. "With the Centre being open for just over a year, and the school about to open, we're unsure what the exact saving will be, but we're expecting the system will save us approximately one-third of our energy bill," says McGonigal. Other notable design features include a stormwater retention reservoir located under a "green zone" next to a small circular parking and a drop-off area for visitors to the school and library. Water from the snowmelt pit is stored in two small ponds on the other side of the buildings and will be used as an outdoor science area for the school. One large parking lot will serve both facilities, with a bus drop-off area for students who will enter The Legends Centre and climb stairs to the second level to reach the school. The concessions area on the second level is located close to the school and theatre entrances. This means that it will be busy serving student meals on weekdays and other patrons in the evening and on weekends. "It took a lot of discussion with the city's operations people to come up with a carefully structured access agreement that allows areas of the building to be secured in a variety of ways, or all open, as it would be for a large tournament. The school division and the city deserve incredible marks for cooperation in all aspects," concludes Olfert. n Location 701 Centennial Boulevard, Warman, Saskatchewan Owner/Developer City of Warman Architect aodbt Architecture + Interior Design General Contractor Stuart Olson Dominion Construction Ltd. Structural Consultant J C Kenyon Engineering Inc. Mechanical Consultant MacPherson Engineering Inc. Electrical Consultant PWA Engineering Ltd. Total Developed Area 149,200 square feet Construction cost $22 million The Legends Centre 13-09-13 4:06 PM

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