From Sneakers to Skates

Lee Zeidman has just one request. As the Staples Center official responsible for changing the arena from a basketball court to a hockey rink to a concert stage, he choreographs an intricate production that is scheduled so tightly that there is little room for error. Hardwood floors are pieced together atop the hockey rink. Hydraulic systems lift or pull down seats. Twenty-four-second clocks are wired into place. Everything must fit quickly and cleanly. Hence his request: Please, no rodeos. “I hate bringing dirt into the building,” he says with a shudder. “Rodeos and tractor pulls are great, but it kills me to bring dirt into a facility like this.”

Staples Center is the only arena in North America to house three major professional sports teams. For that reason, among others, it will not often be dark. About 200 events are scheduled during its first year, with the number expected to rise.

For Zeidman, vice president of operations for the arena, that means Kobe Bryant’s pirouettes and Ziggy Palffy’s feints can’t be the only dazzling moves in the building. After the crowds leave, the 35 to 40 members of the crew must make their own magic, preparing for the next event--sometimes the same day. Three Clipper-King doubleheaders, two King-Clipper doubleheaders and one Laker-Clipper doubleheader are scheduled this season. Then, of course, there are the concerts, arena football and next summer’s Democratic National Convention.

Zeidman expects the easiest switch for his crew, which includes workers from the Great Western Forum and Sports Arena, will be from the Clipper floor to the Laker floor, or vice versa. That should take 90 minutes. The teams could not share a floor because of differences in their colors, baskets, end zones and court-side seating arrangements. Also, some sideline ads must be changed because sponsors may have paid to advertise during one team’s games, but not the other’s. When the teams play each other, they will alternate the “home” team designation.

Changing from hockey to basketball will also be fairly easy, because there is no need to groom the ice. At the Forum, the swap took about seven hours with a crew of 24. Zeidman hopes to trim that to two hours at the new arena because, among other things, the new arena has storage areas at each end, enabling workers to move equipment in one door and out the other. The Forum had just one storage area.

Switching from basketball to hockey will be a challenge because the ice must be prepared and cleaned. That may take four to six hours at first, as may each conversion in the beginning, but Zeidman hopes to pare that to 2 1/2 hours. “It will take a while until we figure out the right amount and mix of manpower and make sure everything we need to get to is in the places they need to be,” he says. “We don’t want to put things in a storage room that would take 15 or 20 minutes to get to because it will kill you in a changeover.”

Conversions between basketball and hockey will be aided by the arena’s multiple sight-line seating system, now used in about half a dozen arenas. It enables crews to raise sections of seats into place hydraulically, instead of with a forklift, as was necessary at the Forum. Seats are dropped down for hockey. For basketball, “you’ll hook them up and raise them to give you your basketball sight lines.”

Zeidman and his crew have rehearsed the changeovers. And they will have about two weeks between Sept. 30, the projected date for the certificate of occupancy, and the inaugural gala, a private party Oct. 16. “That’s not enough time, when you think about everything you have to learn about this building,” Zeidman says. The Kings’ home opener is Oct. 20, the Clippers’ Nov. 2 and the Lakers’ Nov. 3.

For transitions involving concerts, the switch from a concert arrangement to hockey is among the most difficult and time-consuming. A concert typically ends late. Equipment must be moved out and the stage must be dismantled. The ice also needs major work to restore it to game conditions.

Most conversions will be routine after a few months’ practice, Zeidman predicts, yet little will prepare the crew for the Democrats’ convention in August. “It’s great for the city and great for the building, but 10 months after opening, we’re going to tear it apart,” he says. “The United Center [in Chicago] was open for two years when it did the [Democratic] convention in 1996. We won’t have had a lot of time to figure this building out, things like cleanup and other operations that are going to take a lot of time.”

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Arena Conversions

Quick conversions from hockey to basketball to concerts, and back again, will be important for the new arena to succeed. Here’s a scenario of how the conversion is done for hockey and basketball, using a crew of 35 to 40 workers.

From Hockey to Basketball: 2 hours

1. Arena is cleaned and all Plexiglas and corner dasherboards are removed.

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2. 515 pieces of floor overlay are laid over the ice. Next, wiring is done and 24- second clocks are put in place.

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3. Some lower-level seat sections are hydraulically raised while 15 carts of 10-foot-wide lower-level seat sections, each weighing 800 pounds, are forklifted into place.

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4. 210 pieces of maple flooring with either the Laker or Clipper logos are placed over the overlay floor. Baskets, ad signage, team benches, court-side seats and scorer’s tables are put in place.

From Basketball to Hockey: 2 1/2 hours

1. Arena is cleaned. Maple flooring, baskets, ad signage, team benches, court-side seats and scorer’s tables are removed.

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2. Hydraulic seats are lowered and all non-stationary seats are removed.

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3. Overlay sheets are removed. Rewiring is done for hockey.

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4. Corner dasherboards are replaced. Plexiglas is placed on dasherboards and cleaned. Zambonis clean ice.

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To help speed up the conversion process, two storage areas are used. All running machines and furniture can enter from one entryway and leave through another.

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Basketball equipment is stored here.

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Four forklifts, wo Zambonis, tables, boards and all other furniture are kept in storage areas.

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How a Rink Becomes a Floor

1. Seven miles of steel pipes are laid within an eight-inch-thick concrete slab. Glycol, a freon-like liquid, is pumped through the pipes to freeze the concrete slab.

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2. Next, a thin mist of water is sprayed on the frozen concrete. This freezes and is painted white. Logos and lines are also painted. This layer is then sealed with another mist of water, followed by a flooding of about 10,000 gallons of water, forming the ice layer. The ice will remain in place until the end of the season.

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3. Atop the ice is the overlay floor. It is composed of about 515 4-foot-by-8-foot planks of a composite material--a center core of hard foam sandwiched between layers of plywood and a hard polyurethane plastic.

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4. For basketball, 210 4-foot-by-8-foot panels of maple flooring are bolted together to form the playing surface. Slats, or “sleepers,” of 2-inch-by-3-inch pine run like floor joists underneath each panel, creating gaps or hollow areas in the floor. This allows the floor to be more springy, causing less wear and tear on the players.

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5. At the end of the season, or for special occasions, hot water is pumped through PVC pipes in the soil below the concrete, melting the ice above.

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How the Seats Are Reconfigured

A time-saving feature in the arena conversions is the telescopic seating system. Whole seating sections are on wheels so that they can be rolled in and out, and hydraulic lifts raise them for basketball or lower them for hockey.

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Sections featuring the telescopic seating system.

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Areas in red indicate retractable seating sections added for basketball games.

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Estimated preparation times

Event:

Concerts: 6-8 Hours

Democratic National Convention: 5 Weeks

Sources: Staples Center; Robbins Sports Surfaces; Times staff