Convention Centers & Sports
Ever since we designed the MEP systems of Madison Square Garden (1968) and Shea Stadium (1964), Syska Hennessy Group has been at the forefront of creating compelling fan and visitor experiences.
Today, we’re helping cities, including Pasadena, CA, Phoenix, AZ, and Anchorage, AK, and universities such as UCLA and Oregon State to build and expand convention centers and stadiums that are not only exciting, world-class destinations, but energy efficient, safe and highly successful economic drivers.
Enriching Fans’ Experience
Through infrastructure and mobile connectivity, we help clients enable tens of thousands of fans to connect and share their event live. For the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona, home of the NHL Coyotes, Syska’s infrastructure supports flexible yet sophisticated centralized lighting controls and a comprehensive security system that adapts from sporting to entertainment events as needed. The San Diego Convention Center similarly features award-winning lighting design powered by a central plant with gas-absorption chillers that minimize electrical costs during peak occupancy.
Sustainable and Cost-Efficient Design
Our work enables building owners and architects to design building envelopes that leverage ambient sun, wind, water, air and light conditions to improve visitor comfort and well-being while reducing energy consumption and costs. Ambient climate conditions provide key efficiencies in convention centers and stadiums. For Oregon’s Reser Stadium extension, our integration of natural ventilation with the HVAC system that linked directly to operable windows in stadium suites, along with energy-efficient lighting design, helped our clients to meet strict local energy conservation requirements.
Delivering Utility Incentives
We have a proven track record of designing MEP systems that are rewarded by significant energy savings/incentives from utilities. Working closely with the city of San Antonio on the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, we implemented energy-efficiency measures that generated $6 million in incentives for the project.
Highly Responsive
Because sports and convention venues experience significant swings in activity and occupancy levels, Syska designs elements to respond quickly to varying cooling and heating loads so that facility operators can efficiently adjust system performance over activity cycles. It gives clients greater control, capital savings and reduced energy costs. For UCLA Pauley Pavilion, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and energy simulations were used to develop the load-shedding and occupant-scheduling controls that led to LEED Gold certification.
