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Go on, admit it. One of the first things you do after finding your seat at a concert or ball game is look around and wonder how quickly you might be able to grab food and a drink. That鈥檚 if you鈥檙e not already wondering where the restrooms are. Once settled, you鈥檒l quickly notice how comfortable you are and how well you can see the event you鈥檝e paid good money to attend.

Then, there are the finer touches the average patron may not consider. Those are things like the flow of foot traffic, the ease of travel throughout the facility, properly placed lighting, and acoustics that are just right no matter where you鈥檙e sitting. In a well-designed facility, these details will have received plenty of attention in the design phase to ensure that everyone at the final venue has the best experience possible.

A well-designed community gathering space is more than the sum of its parts or the maximum seating capacity. It is inviting, comfortable, and easy for all patrons to navigate. Everything that goes into creating a lively and joyful space for people to congregate is now at play in a few exciting Mortenson projects.

Mortenson is currently working with the city of Hillsboro, the Hillsboro Hops minor league baseball team, SRG Partnership and Populous to design the makeover of Ron Tonkin Field 鈥� the Hops鈥� home. There鈥檚 a lot more to this project than just baseball. The planned renovation will not only expand facility capacity but also broaden its ability to host a wide range of events year-round. These will include concerts, food festivals, farmers鈥� markets and community gatherings such as the Latino Cultural Festival that was held at the stadium in June.

As design-builder, Mortenson is dedicated to assuring that the new and improved Ron Tonkin Field appeals to and is accessible to the whole community. To make that happen, Mortenson has built a significant amount of community outreach and engagement into the upcoming design process. We also have a goal of 20 percent participation by COBID (Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity)-certified small businesses in both the project鈥檚 design and construction aspects.

We also value transparency in every step of the process. Ongoing collaboration with the city of Hillsboro and the Hops will successfully keep that open line of two-way communication going with the community until the project is complete. This will help us design and build a project that truly reflects the values and diversity of the community.
Community collaboration will lend to making flexibility a hallmark of the new Ron Tonkin Field, which also must also serve as an entertainment venue, not just a stadium. Flexibility is a reflection of today鈥檚 design world and can take many different forms. In the Greater Portland

area, this ethos can already be found in several other Mortenson projects.

For example, the new Boschma Farms Advanced Manufacturing Center at Clark College in Ridgefield, Washington, is a skills training center that will be designed and built so that spaces can be configured to meet the needs of existing programs, along with future programs created in response to evolving industry trends.

Flexibility also means designing a community gathering space that can be quickly reconfigured for different types of events while also welcoming people with disabilities, different cultural backgrounds, or genders. This will include amenities such as quiet rooms, an extensive network of ADA-accessible ramps, and inclusive seating areas that do not separate people with disabilities from their family or group.

Flexibility further extends to use of the most up-to-date audio-visual technology. For the renovation of the historic Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Mortenson coordinated installation of a state-of-the-art audio system, as well as modern acoustic materials arrayed according to the latest design principles. This brought new life and a modern feel to a classic downtown performance space that is approaching its centennial birthday.

For indoor-outdoor venues like Ron Tonkin Field, the weather is also a key consideration. In a temperate climate like Oregon鈥檚, it is essential to keep patrons comfortable in cooler temperatures. This may include the use of open-air fire pits, portable heaters, or even built-in climate control systems. On the flip side, an effective canopy to provide shade is also essential during the warmer summer months.

No entertainment facility or community gathering space is truly complete without food service. Unlike in older facilities, where employees were an afterthought to the design process and were simply expected to cope with the space provided, an essential design-build consideration today is ensuring that the kitchens, concession stands, and other employee facilities lend to a work experience that is just as positive as the leisure experience of the patrons attending events. It鈥檚 common sense, really. If we design these aspects of the project well, venue employees will be happier, which translates into patrons having a more enjoyable experience.

Ultimately, a successful venue will be flexible, inviting, and reflective of the community. It鈥檚 not good enough to say, 鈥淚f you build it, they will come.鈥� For a true place 鈥渙f dreams鈥� we must first ask people, 鈥淲hat do you want in a community gathering space? If we build it this way, will you come?鈥�

Dan Mehls is the vice president and general manager of Mortenson鈥檚 Portland office. Contact him at 971-202-4113.

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the preceding commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Daily Journal of Commerce or its editors. Neither the author nor the 91视频 guarantees the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein.