Sporting Design

New Ice Rink and Pool to Revive World’s Fair Site

The newest addition to Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens offers an unexpected mix of recreational activities under an innovative roof design.

by Alisa Zevin

The site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs is set to sport a new attraction that may draw big crowds back to Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens – this time to skate and swim.

The new ice rink and pool structure has been in the works for more than six years, with a construction effort that began in 2001, stopped, and restarted in 2005. Upon its completion later this year, the $60 million structure will be the largest facility New York has built on a city-owned park.

The 110,000-sq-ft building will feature an 85- by 200-ft rink and a 50-meter, 10-lane indoor swimming pool with surge tanks and overflow gutters. The rink will host both open skating and league hockey play with a seating capacity of nearly 400.

Foundation work was under way in 2001 when construction bids for the original design came in higher than expected. Before the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and its project team could reassess the plans, the Sept. 11 attacks refocused the city on Lower Manhattan, says Gregg Stanzione, senior project manager at Bovis Lend Lease of New York, the project’s construction manager.

By the time the city returned to the plan in 2004, its Economic Development Corporation had joined the team – adding a new focus. The agency was one of the lead players in the city’s bid to win the 2012 Olympics, and the facility was pegged to offer a pool for water polo and a National Hockey League-regulation ice rink. 

The agencies signed on a pair of New York firms, Handel Architects and Kevin Hom + Andrew Goldman Architects, to work on a new design, which proceeded through mid-2005. The potential for hosting an Olympic event led to several design changes, including shifting the pool and rink from an L-shaped alignment to an end-to-end configuration so that the pool could accommodate bleachers. It also led to the choice of a cable-and-mast supported roof, which turned out to be a faster assembly and lower long-term maintenance option than a truss system, says Blake Middleton, a partner at Handel.

“These are both large, long-span spaces – both the rink and the pool,” he says. “We had to minimize the structural presence on the inside and maintain sightlines. That in turn led us to the concept of the cable-stayed system as the most economical way to span these wide spaces. With trusses, there are a lot more small steel pieces that have to be welded and shipped, and there would have been very deep [steel] members intruding into the space.”

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By the time the Olympic body chose London instead for 2012, the design was nearly complete, leaving most of the plan intact. Work began in November 2005.

The structure will take up roughly two acres of space, with the pool side rising three stories but the ice rink only one story. It stands on a former ash heap atop a swamp that Robert Moses, who planned many large-scale projects across the city, converted into the park and home of the World’s Fair in the 1930s. Though the rink is at grade, the unstable soils led to a decision to build the pool 12 ft. above grade, because the water pressure on a below-ground bathtub would have been too strong, Middleton says.

Most of the structure will sit on the footprint of the original plan, which forced the team to incorporate as much of the previously built foundation as possible into the new structure, while also driving new piles through the site’s corrosive soils, says Jonna Carmona-Graf, director of the consultant program at the parks department.

“[We’re] getting everything to work and allowing for additional piles without damaging the piles already installed and approved,” Carmona-Graf says.

The cable-stayed roof will allow 120 by 230 ft column-free clear spans in both the rink and pool sections. The wide span is helpful on the pool side, Stanzione says.

“The cable- and mast-supported roof provides a low-profile structure at the roof with less complex steel,” he adds. “There’s less surface area of steel that could get corroded by the chlorine environment in the pool.” 

The cable-stayed roof was challenging mainly because of its scale, says Paul Gossen of Geiger Engineers of Suffern, N.Y., the project’s structural engineer.

“In this case, it was relatively simple because all the cables were stressed simultaneously,” he says. “But still it’s a challenge because it’s so many cables and you have to monitor everything.” 

The building also has an architectural precast concrete sandwich-panel façade and glass curtain wall chosen for its insulation value. At the pool, the exterior features a triple-glazed, high-performance curtain-wall system that aims to prevent condensation when the temperature outside is below freezing and the temperature inside the heated pool area is 85 F and 50% relative humidity.

Other project aspects aim to prevent corrosion and reduce the need for frequent maintenance. For instance, the team will use precast concrete roof planks instead of metal deck, and textile fabric ductwork in place of sheet metal.

The opening of the facility also ties into another high-profile project. The park currently has an ice rink in a structure originally designed by Aymar Embury II for the 1939 World’s Fair. The rink, added in the 1960s, has shared the space with the Queens Museum of Art since 1972.

Now, construction of the new rink will allow the museum to take over the entire Embury building in a $37 million renovation and expansion project designed by Grimshaw Architects of London and Ammann and Whitney of New York. That project will rebuild and restore exterior façades, add a winter garden and seven galleries for temporary exhibits, and provide space for a library branch focused on arts and media. Construction on the museum expansion is set to begin this year and finish in late 2009 or early 2010. 

Key Players

Owner: N.Y.C. Department of Parks & Recreation, New York

Owner’s Agent: N.Y.C. Economic Development Corporation

Construction Manager-General Contractor: Bovis Lend Lease, New York

Architect: Handel Architects, New York; Kevin Hom + Andrew Goldman Architects, New York

Structural Engineer: Geiger Engineers, Suffern, N.Y.