Photo: Lara Swimmer

The $60 million, 175,000-sq ft ShoWare Center is a sports and events center complex to be used for amateur/minor league hockey, basketball, arena football, concerts, area graduations, etc. The Center is the new home for the Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team. The facility seats 6,000 for hockey and arena events, approximately 7,800 for concerts and shows, and has 20 premium suites and club seating. There are 850 stalls of on-site parking. Concessions and vending are provided in the facility, serviced by a main kitchen and four concession stands. The project is constructed to meet LEED Silver certification, and it will be the first LEED accredited event center. Some sustainable efforts include maintaining clean indoor air quality and the use of regional and recycled materials. Overall, Mortenson’s management of the recycling program resulted in the recycling of more than 90% of construction debris.

The facility includes an on-site system to create, maintain, and remove the 17,000-sq ft ice rink. The concrete ice slab is 85 feet wide and 200 feet long. Directly below the surface are layers of cooling pipe, insulation, and a heating system. The pour was a detailed process culminating with a 5-inch thick concrete slab ready for the ice surface finish.

With the fast-tracked schedule, the Mortenson project team had to ensure that any major holdups would be avoided. It ordered building materials and supplies earlier in the construction process than usual, and modeled the site using 3D and 4D Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology. In one instance, the use of 4D technology saved six and a half weeks when a precast delivery delay threatened to impact the steel structural construction. With the aid of 4D modeling, Mortenson was able to erect the precast and the steel simultaneously once the precast arrived, as opposed to the traditional construction method of first building the precast then the steel.