Masonry Magazine November 2001 Page. 43
As a fan, if you have attended a baseball, football, basketball or hockey game recently, you may have experienced a renaissance taking place in sporting arenas all over the country. Bank-One Ball Park in Phoenix, Miller Park in Milwaukee, Safeco Field in Seattle, Comerica Park in Seattle, Enron Field in Houston and Camden Yards in Baltimore have all led the renaissance from the old, cold stadiums of the past, built from precast concrete, to today's beauty of masonry. Charmed by the allure that fans have for old, historic fields of brick and ivy such as Chicago's Wrigley Field, architects and owners are turning to more fan-friendly palaces that make you feel good about their stadiums. More and more, they are turning to masonry.
And now the renaissance continues in Dallas, Texas where it is often heard that "Everything is bigger in Texas". This saying brings on a new meaning when talking about the new American Airlines Center, the new home of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and the Dallas Stars hockey team. Driving into downtown Dallas on 1-35 East, rising above all other structures in the area, the massive American Airlines Center represents everything that is magnificent about masonry. Over a million units of brick and concrete block, eleven thousand pieces of limestone, seventeen hundred Swedish Mahogany granite panels and over three hundred brick arches, prefabricated on-site, were utilized in order to make this project come to life and place the AAC among one of the premier sports arenas in America, if not the world.
Dee Brown Inc. (DBI) was the mason contractor responsible for constructing the "skin" of the American Airlines Center, and had only eight months to complete their work. "It was an extremely short period of time for such a complex wall system, which included reinforced CMU backup, the blending of granite base and limestone details and the use of massive brick arches which covered a 115-foot wide, five story tall opening with no way of getting there to support and lay it in place. So DBI had to create an innovative way to install the arches. What we effectively did was build the arches from the top down, using four-foot wide panels weighing 4,400 pounds each," said Robert V. Barnes Jr., Chairman of DBI. Though all projects of this magnitude have obstacles, there were a few that were unique to this project.
With the arches in place, DBI now works on the remaining brick, limestone and granite construction.
Dee Brown, Inc.'s affectionately named "Starship Enterprise" was custom-designed and built specifically for the AAC's smaller and giant arches.
MASONRY NOVEMBER, 2001 43