2025 Mountain States Best Projects
Best Sports/Entertainment: Soldier Hollow Nordic Center Competition Management Building Renovation & Expansion

Soldier Hollow Nordic Center Competition Management Building Renovation & Expansion
Midway, Utah
BEST PROJECT
Submitted by Jacobsen Construction
Owner Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation
Lead Design Firm Elliott Workgroup
General Contractor Jacobsen Construction
Civil Engineer Alliance Engineering
Structural Engineer BHB Structural
MEP Engineer BNA Consulting
Designated as the host site for the biathlon and cross-country events at the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, Soldier Hollow features a three-story timber and stick frame hybrid structure. The project’s scope included demolishing and renovating 7,000 sq ft of existing area and adding 26,000 sq ft to accommodate broadcasters, competition officials, athletes and fans.
The building includes spaces for indoor and outdoor spectators, modern booths for broadcasting and race management, flexible multiuse event areas, upgraded athlete training spaces and a Nordic sports equipment rental shop. It also features a 360-degree viewing deck overlooking the competition areas and surrounding landscapes.
Through two high-elevation winter seasons, extraordinary amounts of snow fell, even above the high totals typically experienced in the area. The team managed to avoid OSHA-recordable incidents by aggressive attention to snow clearing and ground salting, numerous safety huddles reviewing best practices for avoiding falls and mandated jobsite-wide use of ice traction work boot cleats.
Photo courtesy Jacobsen Construction
By integrating the expansion into the area’s natural topography, the design allows for grade-level entries on two floors. The lowest level houses the rental equipment shop, providing direct access to ski trails for school groups, while the middle floor serves as a day lodge for the general public. The top level, elevated above the main circulation areas, features a large gathering space with a wrap-around deck, perfect for hosting events. Four large, vertically folding glass walls open to create seamless indoor-outdoor access, offering nearly 360-degree views of competitions encircling the building.
One of the project team’s primary goals was to responsibly use the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation’s long-sought-after funds for this project. Extensive value engineering during preconstruction helped identify $2 million in savings. These solutions included removing a full story off the building’s design in favor of a three-story structure with larger and more cost-efficient floor plans and eliminating a cost-prohibitive access tunnel by relocating some of the building’s mechanical systems.


