ANAHEIM ARENA : ‘A Tough Act for Anyone to Follow’

Those stepping into Anaheim Arena for the first time might find themselves scratching their heads, doing double takes, wondering if they are in the right place.

Is this a sports and entertainment arena or the Ritz-Carlton?

Doesn’t Orange County already have a Performing Arts Center?

The new arena, which opens with Saturday’s Barry Manilow concert and will be home to the National Hockey League’s Mighty Ducks, is a picture of elegance, with surprisingly keen attention paid to comfort and detail.

There is marble everywhere--on the floors and walls of all three concourses, in the tunnels leading to seating areas, in the four corner staircases leading to the upper levels. There is 200,000 square feet of it in all, in four rich colors--dark and light beige, rose and dark green--imported from the Philippines, Spain and Taiwan.

Among the other distinguishing upgrades: a high-tech art piece by Korean artist Nam June Paik, cherrywood doors opening to the luxury suites, plush carpeting and lounge areas on the club concourse, brass fixtures in club-level restrooms, a luxurious Arena Club, and fully upholstered theater-style seats.

“It’s an unbelievable building,” said Dennis Finfrock, general manager of the MGM-Grand Garden Arena, which is scheduled to open in Las Vegas in 1994. “I personally have an interest in seeing other arenas, and I like to keep up with the Joneses. But Anaheim Arena is going to be a tough act for everyone to follow.”

When a construction bid of $60 million cam in well below the original estimate of $72 million, arena developers added $6 million in eye-pleasing enhancements, including $2.5 million for interior marble tile and $1 million for the polished granite that lines the lower level of the building’s exterior.

While many sports and entertainment area concourses have sealed concrete floors and concrete block walls, which tend to grow dingy and leave a cold feeling, there is no visible concrete in Anaheim Arena concourses.

“Nobody, and I’ll repeat, nobody , has spent this much on interior finishes,” said Jim Linyard, construction manager for Phoenix-based HuntCor Inc., general contractor for the Anaheim Arena and construction manager for the new America West Arena in Phoenix. “We build more of these than anyone in the world, and in a sports arena, (marble tile) has never been touched.”

It will be, eventually, by dirty hot-dog wrappers, cheese nacho drippings, cotton candy remnants and used bubble gum. Sure, the marble-tiled floors look great now, but what about after the first Metallica concert?

“It’s a real durable surface and can take a lot of abuse,” said Chris Carver, lead architect for Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc., known as HOK Sport. “You spill the beers, squirt the ketchup and all of that, and it’s just a matter of wiping it up. I think the building will wear well from a maintenance standpoint.”

Carver said he believes the extensive use of marble and the dramatic glass archways at the south and north entrances gives the building the feel of a 1920s-era municipal auditorium.

But make no mistake: This arena, which will hold 17,250 for hockey, 18,200 for basketball and up to 19,400 for center-stage events, is strictly state of the art.

Kansas City, Mo.-based HOK Sport, which designed such notable athletic venues as Oriole Park in Baltimore, the new Comiskey Park in Chicago and the San Antonio Alamo Dome, took advantage of recent technology to develop a seating configuration that resembles a steep, U-shaped bowl, which will provide fans with better views than those in the Forum or Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Architects could generate views of the floor from any seat in the arena with the computer-assisted drafting design system. Using six feet as the average height for spectators, seating was designed so patrons could see the entire playing surface over the heads of spectators two rows in front of them. Fans will be able to look between and over the heads of those in the row immediately in front of them.

“Unless Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is sitting in front of you, you should have an unobstructed view,” Carver said.

By breaking the arena up into three levels--plaza, club and upper--and slightly cantilevering one over another, architects were able to push the luxury suites closer (the 82 suites are located either 17 or 22 rows off the main event floor) and squeeze overall seating inward and upward.

Sight lines are especially good in the upper deck, which rises at a 33-degree angle and will place the heads of spectators in one row at shin-level of fans behind them.

“Most people who have been to the Forum or Sports Arena will sense that this building, while it’s a little bigger, will be more intimate,” said Carver, who designed Milwaukee’s Bradley Center Arena and is currently designing Chicago’s new United Center, which will house the Bulls and Blackhawks.

“The steepness and layering of the seats creates more of a vertical surface, and it appears the seats are a lot closer to the floor than they are. In the upper deck, even though you’re quite a ways away, you’ll feel like you’re right on top of the action.”

And when there’s a break in the action, spectators should be impressed by the arena’s high level of convenience. Leave any seat in the house, and within three isles there will be restroom facilities, concession stands, drinking fountains and pay telephones.

Brad Mayne, arena general manager, said the facility has more points of sale for food and beverage (120 in 20 concession stands) and more restroom facilities (one toilet per 75 women, one toilet per 350 men and one urinal per 100 men) than any similar-sized arena in the country.

“If someone can get up at intermission, hit the restroom, get some food and drink and return to their seat before the next period, we’re going to enhance revenues,” Mayne said. “They’re going to be happy, we’ll be happy. It’s a win-win situation.”

Added Carver: “In some buildings you go in and say: ‘I’m going to plant my butt in the seat, and I’m not going anywhere until the game’s over because I know I’ll miss a period if I get up to buy a beer.’ But here, you won’t have a long wait for concessions or to use the restrooms, so people will be encouraged to use them.”

There will be plenty of other modern conveniences, including an automated teller machine on the plaza concourse, listening devices for the hearing-impaired, seating areas for the disabled on all levels. Other features include a communication system that will allow waiters on the club level to take food and beverage orders and simultaneously transmit them to preparers, and a portable seating system, which will ease the arena’s transition from a hockey to a basketball configuration and vice versa.

“Many times I’ve told people what we have, and they’ll say: ‘Oh, that sounds nice,’ ” Mayne said. “Then they’ll come in, and it kind of takes their breath away. They’ll say: ‘Wow, I had no idea it was this nice.’ It’s hard to get people to understand how upscale this facility is.”

Here’s one suggestion: Let them watch a Mighty Ducks game next fall from the club level or a luxury suite. Then they will have an idea of how opulent this building is.

Club-ticket holders and suite owners and guests will have access to preferred parking and four private entrances into the arena, and they will be greeted inside by a concierge.

Before the game or between periods, they can mingle in two expansive, plush club lounges, each with opposing, full-service bars made of cherrywood, inlaid with marble and featuring marble countertops and brass toe rails. They can sip cocktails and watch the sunset from two open-air balconies set off each lounge.

Club-seat holders may choose from a wide array of sandwiches and salads on an upgraded menu and will have waiter service. Suite owners may have full-course meals and sit-down china service in their luxury boxes.

Plaza-level suites will be equipped with a restroom, carpeting, wet bar, television, sliding glass doors and 10 fully upholstered leather seats. Club-level suites will not have restrooms, but they are slightly bigger and have 14 seats.

Club seat and luxury suite patrons also have access to the Arena Club, located on the west side of the building on the club level. About $1 million is being spent to decorate and equip the room, which will have seating for about 300, a bar, marble-tile and carpeted floors, and cherrywood walls with ebony accents. A glass wall will provide a view into the arena.

“We’ll offer dinner, lunch or brunch, depending on the event,” Mayne said. “After events, we’ll turn it into a large lounge space for team players, VIPs, stars and team executives. It will be similar to what the Forum Club offers.”

For those fans who are not in Robin Leach’s Rolodex, take heart: The cheap seats will not feel like cheap seats. There is as much marble and quality finishes in the upper concourse as there is on the plaza level, and Mayne said he believes the first few rows of the upper deck are the best seats in the house.

The last few rows are not bad either.

“It’s really hard to describe unless you go up to the last row and sit down,” Mayne said. “You’re much higher, looking down on the ice, which puts you a lot closer to the action than you are in older arenas.”

Arena designers can only hope the audio and acoustical effects in the building are as good as the visuals. Wild bounces of a puck or basketball could lead to some thrilling sporting moments, but wildly bouncing waves of highly amplified sound during a concert tend to reduce the most expertly played music to a murky glob of echoing noise.

Sound engineers who have to make musicians sound good in houses built for big-time sports are faced with a perplexing situation, according to Bob Walker, general manager of Sound On Stage, a Bay Area company that runs audio systems for major touring bands.

“The good arenas . . . well, there aren’t any good ones,” he said. “They’re all empty, big spaces. If the house is an echoplex, the most sophisticated engineer can only go so far. It’s still going to sound muddy. Anything that can be done to dampen these things would be greatly appreciated.”

With that in mind, Anaheim Arena has some sound-absorbing features intended to give bands a better chance. The problem, said Jack Wrightson, acoustic engineer for the project, is that the very improvements that can make rock bands sound better--plenty of insulation and absorbent surfaces to keep noise from bouncing wildly through the hall--can also make an arena sound inappropriately calm when it’s time for a hockey crowd to cheer.

The challenge, Wrightson said, was to design a hall that would give the rockers and pop singers a decent chance, while giving the Ducks a home rink where a crowd going bonkers will feel like a crowd going bonkers.

To help the pop acts, the arena’s roof is made of perforated steel, backed by a layer of Fiberglas “not unlike the pink, fluffy stuff you would find in the wall of a house,” Wrightson said. The Fiberglas will absorb sound waves and reduce those murk-producing bounces.

At the same time, the arena has a suspended ceiling above the top row of seats, designed to keep crowd noise in when the Ducks score a goal. Wrightson said the ceiling has been angled so that, with proper speaker placement at concerts, it won’t create long, echo-producing wave bounces.

The cloth upholstery on the arena’s chairs also should absorb some sound that would otherwise bounce off of empty seats and hinder clarity.

“By arena standards it will be a good, acceptable building for concerts, but not a knock-your-socks-off building,” Wrightson said. “It’s not going to be the loudest hockey building in the country, or the best concert building, either. (It will be) adept at both, but master of neither.”

Behind--and below--the scenes, Anaheim Arena will be a hub of activity on event days.

The service level, which is located 21 feet underground, includes arena administrative offices, NHL and National Basketball Assn. team administrative offices (the arena has yet to secure an NBA tenant), home locker rooms for the Mighty Ducks and an NBA team, four additional locker rooms for visiting teams, four star-performer dressing rooms, an officials’ locker room, a loading dock and receiving area to accommodate five semi-trucks, a huge trash compactor, a garage for the Zamboni ice-maintenance machine and plenty of storage space.

“We’ll need room for six or seven backboards for when Shaquille O’Neal comes to town,” Carver said of the Orlando Magic’s board-breaking center.

Outside, the arena has a distinct, Southwestern look, with light, rose-colored, stucco facades accented by green-tinted glass in both the signature archways, which rise 70 feet above the entry plazas, and the four corner stairwells.

A dark, forest-green drum, which is formed by the top of the seating bowl, provides a stark contrast to the bright, white, latticework structural steel roof.

Palm trees dominate the landscape, and the arena will be heavily illuminated on event nights.

“It’s a little bold, but it’s really a beacon,” Carver said. “We were looking for something that said Southern California. I think it will wear well, and I don’t think, architecturally, it will be obsolete for a long time.

“And you can’t mistake it for an office building. So many of these buildings built in the past are nothing more than black boxes--a lot of arenas built in the 1970s weren’t very architecturally significant, even though they were the main gathering places for their communities. They didn’t make a statement.

“But there’s an emotion with a building--you’re either proud of it, or it’s just a place to go. I think this building will give the community a lot to be proud of.”

Staff writer Mike Boehm contributed to this story.

THE MARBLE

Designers and builders went around the world in 15 days to procure the marble tile and polished granite that lavishly lines the floors and walls of Anaheim Arena’s concourses and stairwells.

The first stop on the March, 1992, tour of this rock band, headed by HuntCor construction manager Jim Linyard, was the Philippines, where dark beige interior marble was quarried and fabricated. Then it was off to Spain to oversee production of light beige and rose-colored interior tile.

The group then went to Italy to select the exterior granite, which lines the lower level of the arena and encases the glass archways. The granite was quarried in Sweden, shipped to Verona, Italy, in blocks and fabricated there. The group bypassed Taiwan, because there was only a small quantity of dark green tile purchased from that country.

“It’s almost like building a clock,” Linyard said. “Everything has to fit together perfectly. If we tried to put a Spanish stone next to a Philippines stone and they weren’t the same size, it wouldn’t have worked.”

THE JAIL

For those who have had too much to drink, thrown one too many octopuses onto the ice or tried to stuff one of those annoying Mighty Duck calls down another fan’s throat, the holding cells in the arena’s security area won’t be quite as lavishly decorated as the rest of the building. No marble tile, no upholstered seats, no waiter/waitress service.

“They’re going to be bleak,” arena designer Chris Carver said. “Concrete block walls and big steel doors.”

The cells, designed with maintenance in mind, will also have sloped, concrete floors leading to a floor drain.

“More times than not, a physically belligerent person will have misused some type of substance, get sick and throw up,” arena General Manager Brad Mayne said. “If they do anything like that, we can just hose down the cells after we take them out.”

THE ROOF

You know you’ve hit the big time when you make the cover of the Engineering News-Record, the construction industry’s equivalent of an athlete making the cover of Sport’s Illustrated.

The Anaheim Arena roof was honored last October with an ENR cover story titled “Saving Grace in Seismic Zone,” which hailed the New York-based firm of Thornton-Tomasetti/Engineers for designing such a stylish, 329-by-444-foot, long-span roof with all of the safety features needed to withstand major earthquakes.

Arena roofs are commonly erected directly on arena superstructures. Under such a design in an earthquake, the roof has the same motions as the superstructures, which is significantly stiffer. Larger forces are transferred to the superstructures, creating a bigger potential for damage.

In order to reduce forces that would be transferred downward, the Anaheim Arena roof rests on relatively flexible columns, which allowed engineers to increase the amount of time it takes the roof to go through a single motion and reduce the amount of force transmitted to the superstructure.

“There was s 5.5 earthquake back in April, and it came through without a problem,” said Tom Scarangello, senior associate for Thornton Tomasetti.

THE ART PIECE

He has been described as a cultural terrorist, a high-tech guru and the godfather of video art, and he has been fixture on the international avant-garde scene for more than 30 years.

And they’ve let this man into Orange County!

Noted Korean Nam June Paik’s art piece in the main lobby will be a radical departure from Anaheim Arena’s conservative design and color schemes. It will feature 103 television monitors encased in an 18-foot arch raising up to the ceiling on the plaza level.

The 13-inch screens, which will be visible form both sides of the arch, will flash images created by Paik and the arena art committee, which suggested scenes of Anaheim and various sporting events.

“There will be an interesting visual impact when you come into the building,” said HOK-Sport’s Chris Carver, lead architect for the arena.

“It’s the kind of thing that will slam you over the head.”

THE RISERS

Many arena developers whose projects are in the design phases have visited Anaheim Arena to check out its portable end-unit seating system, which will enable an easy four-hour transition between hockey and basketball seating configurations.

Arenas built for hockey and basketball usually have two sets of end seating units, one for each sport. When one set is in use, the other is in storage. But Anaheim will have portable riser systems, with retractable seats that will move on cushions of air. From a hockey configuration, units can be pushed in and turned 180 degrees. The basketball seats can then be pulled out closer to the center of the floor.

“Most arenas have riser units that you have to set chairs on,” arena General Manager Brad Mayne said. “That takes a long time. These units have permanent seats, and you just have to push buttons to operate it. It cuts down on storage space, labor costs and workman’s compensation claims from people who are working too hard too quickly. It’s a nice innovation. We’re the first arena in the country to have it.”

THE SCOREBOARd

Fans in the upper reaches of Anaheim Arena might have a hard time following the 3-inch hockey puck, but at least they’ll have a great view of the replays.

The 35,000-pound, center-hung scoreboard will feature 9-by-12-foot, high-resolution Sony Jumbotron video screens on all four sides of the board. The scoreboard will also display essential game information such as score, period, game clock, timeouts and penalties.

There will also be four 9-by-2 1/2-foot auxiliary boards in front of the arena’s club seats, flashing items such as stats, out-of-town scores, time and game clock.