Wichita, Kansas has a storied history of baseball but a ballpark not up to its standards. In 2020, baseball will once again take center stage among a beautiful setting along the Arkansas River with a new ballpark designed and built through a partnership between JE Dunn Construction, EBY Construction, Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture (SJCF), DLR Group and Professional Engineering Consultants (PEC). The design-build partnership resulted in a 15-month design and construction schedule – one of the fastest ballpark construction projects in modern history thanks to phased design, buyout and rolling GMPs.
The ballpark’s design pays homage to its site – former home to a 1934-era ballpark and the historic Delano neighborhood next door – with dark brick and steel, and subtle influences throughout to Wichita’s steep history in aviation.
As a multi-purpose venue designed to inject energy into downtown, the ballpark was designed with the ability to host other events including football, soccer, hockey, concerts, festivals, and community events. Along with the ballpark, a new office building beyond right field houses a new hall of fame space anchors a planned new mixed-use development aimed at spurring growth along the riverfront. The ballpark’s proximity to the riverfront created unique building challenges including the need for a unique foundation design and a custom system of underground wells to address presence of groundwater in the area.
The ballpark, home to Wichita’s new Triple-A Minor League baseball club, the Wichita Wind Surge, maximized the project program within a fixed budget. It has a capacity of 10,000, including 6,000 seats and 14 private suites. The 360-degree main concourse allows for full circulation around the stadium and includes restrooms and concessions, while state-of-the-art team amenities include three locker rooms, sports medicine, batting tunnel, club level, kitchens, auxiliary locker rooms, party decks, team store, and remote broadcast booth.
Wichita, Kansas, has a storied history of baseball. Yet, until recently the city did not have a ballpark befitting that rich tradition. When JE Dunn and Aptitude were brought in to help make a new ballpark a reality, seamless technology that would ensure a top-notch experience was just as important as the park’s ball field and structure. The stadium is a dark brick and steel structure set on the Arkansas riverfront that pays homage to the site’s former 1934-era ballpark and surrounding historic Delano neighborhood. It has become an anchor destination with the intent to inject energy into the city’s downtown riverfront area. Riverfront Stadium is not only a beautiful building, it also boasts top-of-the-line technology systems that can make a day at the ballpark even better.
The goal of the Riverfront Stadium project was to build a stadium that is not only a beautiful structure for hosting a myriad of events and drawing crowds to a reviving neighborhood, but also to ensure that ballpark visitors, employees, athletes, and journalists experience the up-to-date technology that scrutinizing patrons have come to expect. This is what the Aptitude team does well: think about how a built environment will be used, and design and manage the implementation of the technology that will make the user’s experience seamless. To make this project more challenging, the city was on an expedited schedule – breaking ground in February 2019 and finishing in April 2020 – a timeline that was condensed by several months compared to similar projects. Due to this aggressive schedule, the technology design was not complete prior to the start of construction, creating unique challenges associated with rough-in, routing, and just-in-time delivery of critical materials and equipment.
The stadium’s technology considerations included a need for network cabling for voice and data; a broadcast booth which would need to be integrated with a scoreboard and the audio-visual throughout the stadium, as well as accounting for external broadcasts; wireless internet; closed circuit television;
a pace of game clock; intrusion detection; and card and gate access security systems. The Aptitude team worked with representatives from Major/Minor League Baseball, the City of Wichita, the design-build team, and four low-voltage trade partners throughout this project. Ongoing communication, collaboration, and finding every efficiency possible were critical to delivering each aspect of the project within its condensed timeline.
Rather than hiring a variety of trade partners who each have their own markup and consider only their individual specialty, Aptitude’s strength lies in how it adds value and saves in project costs by managing every element of the entire technology picture and making sure each system works seamlessly in conjunction with every other system – all while serving as the single point of contact from start to finish.
The beautiful stadium, which was voted 2nd place by fans among the 2020 Best Minor League Ballparks in America in Baseball Digest magazine, has quickly become a popular neighborhood fixture. By combining beautiful design elements, best in class construction practices, and the cohesive modern technology integration managed by the Aptitude team, this venue will continue to usher in a new generation of fans for decades to come.
