The Stadium Lofts project was big—160,000 square feet—and, for most, would be understandably intimidating. Renovating a building to accommodate a program for which it wasn’t built already is challenging, but retrofitting apartments into a baseball stadium that had been abandoned for 15 years added serious complexities. Regardless, Watson’s original vision to build the apartments within the art deco limestone and brick façade and under its roof remained.
Time and a lack of oversight had done a lot of damage to the structure and its surroundings. Approximately 25 percent of the roof’s tongue-and-groove wood deck had to be replaced because boards had rotted where the roofing material had disappeared. The limestone and brick masonry on the street side required extensive repairs. “We cut down over 100 trees, many of which were 15 years old, out of the infield,” Watson says. “Think about the shows you see on the Discovery channel about how the Earth takes over after Armageddon. We really saw that here when the trees started growing up over everything.”
Although Stadium Lofts was not eligible for historic tax credits, Watson wanted to maintain the iconic stadium as much as possible. At the main entrance on the building’s southwest corner, residents still experience what it’s like to walk into the stadium because Watson and his team maintained the concrete risers that supported the seating in that area. The building’s leasing office, fitness center and meeting rooms were positioned under these concrete risers. Then throughout the rest of the building, the concrete risers, which supported the outside wall and roof, were removed to make room for three floors of apartments. This is where things got complicated.
Nail Biter
The project’s No. 1 challenge was figuring out how to take out the concrete risers while maintaining the steel columns that supported them and keeping the steel columns laterally stable. As Watson puts it, “There was structural complexity in stripping away all of the structure of the building, leaving one wall and the roof, and hoping it stands up until you build a new building underneath.”
Rob Dee, P.E., principal of Indianapolis-based engineering firm Lynch, Harrison & Brumleve (LHB) Inc., and project engineer for the Stadium Lofts, was part of the team responsible for the design of the building while the bracing and demolition was the responsibility and liability of the contractor, Brandt Construction, Indianapolis. Brandt Construction hired an independent structural engineer, Dan Johnson, P.E., of JBE Structural Solutions, Indianapolis, to be involved in the temporary bracing design.
However, LHB had already thought through a conceptual bracing plan, so the team presented it to Johnson who thought it was efficient and appropriate. LHB and JBE carefully worked through the design together for nearly a month and then presented it to Watson and Brandt Construction to ensure everyone was comfortable with the plan. Ultimately, the team relied on structural-steel pipe braces to stabilize the existing steel columns diagonally down to dead-man anchors. The bracing remained in place for approximately four months.
“There was a lot of shoring required during construction and that shoring had to be carefully thought through and placed before demolition began to kind of hold the parts and pieces we were keeping in place and make sure they didn’t go anywhere while half the structure was being torn down,” Dee says. “That was when the building was at its most vulnerable stage—during demolition.”
About 20,000 tons of concrete that had composed the risers was crushed, and nearly 75 percent of it was reused onsite as fill to level the formerly sloped first floor. In addition, a portion of the nearly 10,000 stadium seats now are used around Indianapolis at bus stops and in parks.