Home, sweet stadium

By Dick Hughes  

AUGUST 25, 2011 8:56 a.m. (0)

When spectators attend a sporting event at a new or renovated college venue, they’re likely to notice the warm ambience of the structure, the good seats and, unlike the old days, lots of bathrooms and concession stands.

What they won’t see is what was done to make life easier for the athletes and improve the team’s win-loss record.

“What we really try to do is build a facility that helps a coach recruit and helps a coach train,” said Greenville architect Michael Keeshen, whose specialty is designing athletic facilities and other higher education buildings.

“If we can do those two things, it can help a team win; and if it wins, then you go to the game and you have the excitement and you notice what a wonderful place it is.”

Keeshen, lead architect and principal of Michael Keeshen & Associates, is responsible for several projects at Clemson, including the Littlejohn basketball coliseum renovation and annex, the Kingsmore baseball stadium and the women’s rowing facility.

He designed the renovated basketball arena at the University of South Carolina Upstate and this summer won contracts in collaboration with the national firm of Populous of Kansas City to design the renovation and expansion of the baseball and softball stadiums at Coastal Carolina University.

Easing Pressure on Athletes

Keeshen’s connection with Populous, a global firm that designed the rebuilt Yankee Stadium, Camden Yards and other high-profile stadiums, goes back to when it was called HOK. Keeshen ran its Greenville office for 10 years before setting out on his own in 2000.

For 12 years, before joining HOK, he was with Craig Gaulden and Davis, a Greenville firm he joined out of Clemson where he received his B.S. and M.A. in architecture and where he was a scholarship sprinter and jumper.

Keeshen said that experience formed his appreciation for the conflicting demands on student-athletes and the issues coaches have to deal with.

“A student-athlete has a tough job because he’s spending a lot of time practicing, this is their second home. You want to make it so that in some of their free time, you encourage them to study there. We make our team rooms a little like a living room.”

Women’s Rowing Gets Help

In approaching an assignment from the perspective of the student-athlete, Keeshen cites experience in designing a new locker and training facility for Clemson’s women’s rowing team, a sport that produces no revenue, no media attention and no fans outside the narrow rowing community.

In scoping out the project, Keeshen was told it would need only a few showers because the girls never used them in the existing building, which had two showers, two sinks and 36 lockers in such small space that 36 people couldn’t be in the room at the same time. The rowers showered and changed in their dorms.

“I said perhaps the reason they are not using them is because they are not designed for how they really want to use them.  If you give them a separate area where they can change and a separate area behind where they can take their shower with a little bit of modesty, they’ll use them all the time.”

The new crew quarters reflect the high priority colleges and architects today place on combining home-like amenities with training facilities. The 11,500-square-foot facility has a locker room with 12 showers, six toilets and washers and dryers, a kitchen, a workout room, and a team meeting room, a lounge and offices for coaches.

It sits on the shore of Lake Hartwell on the western edge of campus.

Better facility brings success

The facility has done wonders for the rowing program, not the least by attracting more competitive student-athletes who may not have looked at Clemson before, said the coach, Robbie Tenenbaum.

“It helps add legitimacy to our sport that 80 female athletes on the rowing team have a locker room on a par or even better than most of the other rowing teams in the country and their counterparts in other sports, whether they are male or female sports. That goes a long way in helping build self-worth; but also when we are recruiting, people see the commitment we have to the sport of women’s rowing, they think, ‘Wow, look how Clemson treats women’s rowing.’”

The success shows. Of the 90 NCAA Division I rowing programs in the country, Clemson has been in the top 15 the last three years, and it has been No. 1 or 2 in the ACC.

The experience of the rowing team makes Keeshen’s point that an attractive performing venue is not enough to build a successful program. As he put it, people “are not going to go to that facility just because it looks good. If the team is not performing, then nobody is going to go just because it is a pretty baseball stadium.”

Rush for the Rest Rooms

The real money is in basketball and football, and that’s where architects like Keeshen look for ways in design to make more money. That simply may come down to bathrooms and concessions stands.

In renovating Littlejohn Coliseum, Keeshen was confronted with a “funky old box built in the 60s by some engineers who had never done a basketball facility before.”

They put in just enough bathrooms to meet code without realizing spectators “go to the bathroom all at one time.” So Keeshen put in far more than required to handle the rush at game breaks.

“Another aspect is they don’t want a long wait in line, so what we try to do is build twice as many links of concession areas. People are still going to have to wait in line at peak times; but if you have more concessions, you are going to get a quicker turnover and people are going to spend more money.”

The change with how people get their news and from whom presents a new challenge for stadium architects, including Keeshen as he works up plans for the Coastal Carolina baseball stadium.

“One of the things we are toying with right now is who gets the prime space in the press box area because you want to treat the blogosphere and regular press good, but then you have the people who are supporting the facility who also want some of those good seats.”

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