Award

FEBRUARY 2015 | 57 TD Place at Lansdowne Park PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY CITY OF OTTAWA TD Place at Lansdowne Park by YVAN MARSTON O ne strangely appropriate outcome of the $290.8-million renovation at Ottawa's Lansdowne Park is how the 100-year-old site finally man- aged to live up to its name and become an actual park. The 40-acre plot was a stadium, hockey arena, fairground and 2,200-space parking lot. But it wasn't a park in the green sense of the term. Over the years, its artificial turf played host to CFL and Grey Cup drama, FIFA U-20 World Cup games, as well as performances by The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Tragically Hip. It was where the city gathered, but when the Rough Riders stopped playing in 1996 and the Senators shuffled off to their new digs in suburban Kanata that same year, less people began gathering there less often. After the site hosted the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup, a serious structural issue was discovered in the south-side stands and a large section was condemned. It was news that could have scuttled the intentions of a group of investors working to reinstate a CFL team here. The Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) would now need to build a stadium for 24,000 spectators. By team- ing up with the city, the group turned the project into a major public-private undertaking, and in the process, spurred the development of much more. Besides building an entirely new south-side stand to seat 10,000, the north-side stands were renovated, the 10,000-seat arena (located underneath the north-side stadium stands) received significant infrastructure upgrades including a major roof repair, and park- ing was relegated to a massive under- ground lot. The expansive project also includes a new retail district, two condominium buildings and a strip of townhomes as well as an office building. There's also a new multiplex theatre, the heritage- designated Horticultural building was moved and restored, and a permanent home was built for the farmers' market. And then there's the park; a rolling, 18-acre collection of hills and pathways that takes up almost half the entire site to create an elaborately landscaped green connection between the parks and paths of the canal. When 24,000 fans filled the stands to roar their approval for the return of the CFL one Friday night last July, the landscape around the spectacle was still under development. One can imagine an imminent future where pedestrians fill the space, gathering in restaurants and on the patios in the retail district, which now includes Ottawa's first Whole Foods and Sporting Life stores. But if you stood further south along the canal, you would see rising from the shadows of the park, the organic form of the wood veil that covers the back facade of the south stand. It has become the site's most iconic feature. "Rather than the back side being just a criss-cross of stairs and ramps, we wanted something that would blend with the natural forms of the park, and also pay tribute to the city's logging past," explains Randy Burgess, VP of communications for OSEG. The curved structure rises 25.5 metres at its highest and spans 154 metres. Screening the concessions and services, and sheltering the upper level, it covers the facade like a giant overturned canoe leaning on its side. Each of the 24 vertical supports, made of curved, laminated Alaskan Yellow Cedar, was individually fabricated using the latest CNC technology and shipped to the site. The horizontal elements, called purlins, are made of the same wood and each was precisely notched to straddle the vertical supports. The whole veil is tied to the concrete stands with steel arms that spread like branches. Despite all the wood (1,800 purlins) the veil contains some 350,000 pounds of steel and 3,500 bolts hold it all together. Across the field, the nor th-side st ands seating was replaced with 14,000 stadium seats, repairs were made to the concrete structure and the beams supporting the original roof were cut back by 14 metres and now support a new canopy. Circulation within the stadium and throughout the site was a key consider- ation. Before the renovations, each side was serviced by separate entrances. The wide concourse that now surrounds the playing field offers great standing views – particularly at each end zone – but also allows users in the retail district to pass through the north-side stands to seats in the south-side stands. And even when a game is on, circula- tion in the park and around the site is not compromised. In fact, a high berm actually follows the edge of the stadium and surrounds the lower seating bowl of the new south-side stands. "This serves to reduce the scale of the south stands from the park and makes the circulation flow naturally around it," explains Robert Fatovic, VP of architec- ture at CannonDesign, whose Toronto office designed the site master plan and the TD Place Stadium. "The top edge of the lower seating area aligns to the level of the berm and circulation on the berm itself continues through the park," he explains, adding that the berm also served to solve a problem of soil remediation on the site. Several tonnes of soil made toxic (though not hazardous to human health) from boilers and refrigeration units that once operated on the site were wrapped in a geotextile and capped with a metre of top soil to form the 10-metre berm that is a key park element. With little more than 21 months from construction start to game day, it's hardly surprising to learn that at its peak, the site saw as many as 1,300 workers, according to Francis Pomerleau, whose firm Pomerleau Inc. was the general con- tractor on the site for the parking garage and stadium work. The Stantec geomatics team provided the land surveying services for the many groups involved in the project, including compilation of client plans, legal sur- veys, project control, layout and as-built LOCATION 1015 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario OWNER City of Ottawa CO-DEVELOPERS The Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group PROJECT MANAGER MHPM Project Managers Inc. ARCHITECTS CannonDesign (site master plan and stadium) IBI Group Architects (parking lot architect) GENERAL CONTRACTOR Pomerleau Inc. STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Halsall Associates Ltd. Adjeleian Allen Rubeli Ltd. MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT Smith + Andersen Consulting Engineering LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS PFS Studio / CSW BUILDING AREA 40 acres TOTAL COST $290.8 million 11:55 AM

• Cover