RocHenge Events / Coors Field, Denver
CHALLENGES… AND REWARDS
Actual demolition of the area at the stadium didn’t begin until last December, and construction began pretty much concurrent with the new year, according to Allyson Gutierrez, project manager for Denver-based M.A. Mortenson Co., the general contractor.
"We had a really quick schedule,” she says. “We had to demo part of it, and then we did some structural infills that helped turn that area into a large meeting room.”
Both RocHenge and the company that installed the tile for the job — Brekhus Tile and Stone of Denver – started on the site in late January, and Cottrell stresses their involvement went beyond the mosaic.
For instance, where the floors weren’t carpeted, they used a Jura Stone beige limestone that’s also installed as slabs on columns in the suites. The total refurbishing of men’s and women’s restrooms included porcelain tile and vanities of Copper Canyon granite. The Brazilian granite named Gold ‘n’ Silver formed the new drink rails.
“The conference rooms are equipped with moveable carts, and we did the granite tops for those,” says Cottrell.
Still the mosaic became the right-to-the-wire segment of the job. Jeff Brekhus, president of Brekhus Tile, explains that late decisions on what materials were going to be used put the delivery of the black granites back until the third week in March.
“We were getting the Nordic Black cut from blocks and shipped to us, so we didn’t have much time to get them waterjetted and installed,” he says.
Getting the job cut involved a steep learning curve, says Rowland + Broughton’s Martin.
“There were a lot of technical challenges working with RocHenge to figure out the best way to lay it out,” he says. “We tried to be very responsive to the basic unit size, which was an 18” X 18” tile. We had to adjust our thinking on how the artwork would lay out, based on how fast they could make it and how fast Brekhus could lay it.”
Cottrell explains that adhering to the 18” X 18” grid wasn’t always easy, especially where shading that fell off to the next tile meant some pieces were as small as one square inch. Still, the RocHenge crew constructed 18” X 18” grid boards, laid out each grid with 1/16” tile spaces, and then transported each grid board to the site.
“We had the entire thing mapped out on the wall, and the digital CAD drawings were onsite in several different areas,” Cottrell says. “Each piece was marked and given a row. Ultimately, we had around 65 rows, and each piece was marked before it was shipped out.”
He adds that RocHenge definitely benefited from having a robotic waterjet system from USG Robotics. While the job could’ve been cut on a less-sophisticated waterjet, Cottrell doubts it could have been done as quickly.
Not only was that important for the squeezed time schedule for the project, but Cottrell says naturally some pieces were broken during installation.
“We had a couple guys taking pieces and running back to the shop with them,” he says. “There were some pieces we probably had to cut four different times because of the nature of the project and the fact that we wanted them to look their very best.”
While the Brekhus crew had to contend with ultra-small pieces, Jeff Brekhus says it also faced a king-sized concern in doing the work: Simply getting the floor flat enough to do a good install.
“When you think about the design of a stadium, it’s built with a lot of I-beams and corrugated metal, and they pour concrete on top of that,” he says. “The floor tends to belly out at the I-beams, and when the stadium was done originally, they just put carpet on it.
“With the mosaic, it had to be perfectly flat. That, and the NanaWall windows gave us the opportunity to get a lot of concrete in there.”
Brekhus estimates it took between two-and-a-half and three semi-trailer loads of MAPEI Ultraplan® Easy to create a level working area,. Other MAPEI products were used throughout the rest of the project, including Karabond+Keralastic™ to anchor a crack-isolation membrane, and Kerabond™ mortar.
Although Brekhus estimates he had about 15 days on the jobsite with a 35-person crew, the end of the project proved to be intense.
“The last four days were 24 hours a day,” he says. “It was a pretty amazing scope of work. We had to get it in, get off of it, let it dry and still give the people moving furniture in a day for that.”
Nor is he the only one amazed with the push and the final project.
“They did an incredible job,” says Mortenson’s Gutierrez. “There were a couple times where we had to make design changes because of the stone, and they were having problems as they cut it. People worked some unusual hours, but they were all team players and we got it done – so the Rockies had a great opening day.”
The team’s Falvey agrees.
“I think, from the start, everyone had shared a vision of where we were going and how special this space would be,” he says. “But, it was also a project that necessarily evolved over time. And, in the end, not only did they get it done on time, but I think the quality speaks for itself.”