Facility
for Worship, Performance
Church Auditorium Has 7,400 Seats
by Elaine Schmidt
Part performing arts center and part worship facility, the
7,400-seat Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington,
Ill., has demanded creative thinking from its designers and
builders.
The $70 million project broke ground in May 2002 and is scheduled
for completion in July. It adds 350,000 sq. ft. to a busy
400,000-sq.-ft. church campus and creates one of the largest
performing arts spaces in the country.
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"This building is an opera house of sorts," said
Doug Pasma, head architect on the project for Goss/Pasma Architects
of Evanston, Ill. "It is rigged for high-quality theater,
with a full fly space and stage."
He added that even though the auditorium is much like a civic
performing arts space, worship facilities of this type are
built at about one-fifth the cost of municipal arts centers.
Even with the smaller budgets, the worship facilities have
to incorporate many of the same theatrical elements of municipal
arts centers.
The general contractor on the project is Chicago-based Pepper
Construction Co.
Has Sophisticated Equipment
Scott Troeger, director of campus development for the church,
said the new facility will include a stage equipped with an
orchestra pit, sophisticated video and sound equipment, a fly
space and full wagon house.
"We do a lot of events in the church that are back to back,"
he added. "Our production people and volunteers work through
the night now because we don't have the space we need."
The wagon house will be an area to the rear of the stage that
accommodates storage of rolling, flat wagons holding fully assembled
scenery and props. A large overhead door can be lowered to separate
the wagon space from the stage.
"We will have three wagon spots," Troeger said. "While
one event is going on, people can be setting up for the next
event on these wagons. Then the wagon on stage slides into one
of the spots and we slide the next one out."
The facility design has had to blend these elements of theatrical
construction with the seating capacity of a large worship space
and the aesthetic requirements of a pastoral campus. Because
of the size of the new structure, the new auditorium had to
be situated in the parking area, at the main entrance of the
old auditorium, which will remain a functional part of the church
campus after construction is completed.
"One of our challenges was to incorporate window walls
that would give views to the outside," Troeger said. "Our
current auditorium, which has been in use for the last 22 years,
is situated where its large windows look out onto a lake and
wetland area."
Pasma said his firm has designed a full curtain wall on both
sides of the stage that looks out into a landscaped garden area.
"We can close off those windows in 30 or 40 seconds to
create a black space for multimedia presentation," he added.
Pasma's firm developed the master plan for the campus and has
been involved with the church for about eight years.
Can You Hear Me Now?
Acoustics were a concern in design of the large hall and affected
everything from ceiling composition and size of ductwork to
the means of supporting the two large balconies.
"The ceiling is a combination of drywall and soft acoustic
materials and even some transparent fabrics," said Rich
Mueller, project vice president for Pepper Construction.
"We went with hard-surface floors, too, so that the sound
bounces around a little more.
"The duct sizing is much larger than normal, so air speeds
in the ducts are slower to minimize sound concerns."
Supporting Balconies
With approximately 2,500 seats on the main floor and another
2,500 seats in each of two large balconies, stability of the
cantilevered balconies was important.
"When you have a significant number of people in a balcony
that is not supported by posts beneath it, which would disturb
sightlines, you have to design it with as much stiffness as
possible," Troeger said. "If there is any movement
from the people in the balcony, other than just sitting still
in the seats, it will cause some kind of vibration."
Robert Klynsma, project engineer for JDH Engineering of Grandville,
Mich. said, "We ended up using trusses for the balcony
that were solid plate girders, 11 ft. deep with solid 1-in.
plates." He added that part of the task was to cross ductwork
through the trusses.
Klynsma said that the project's fast-track schedule was daunting.
"Once we started in earnest, we had about eight months,"
he added. "We started construction before we knew what
the building looked like."
Keeping the Church Open
The existing auditorium had to keep functioning while the
new structure was being built.
Troeger said a high level of communication was essential between
the church and the 15,000 to 17,000 people who regularly attend
weekend services.
"We developed a canopy system to keep people safe and give
them access to their front door," Mueller said. A temporary
covered entrance pathway was constructed to funnel people from
parking areas, through construction, to the front door of the
existing structure.
"We had to stage the construction so that a new cooling-tower
facility could service the existing church while we disassembled
the old one," Mueller added.
Although weekend worship did not conflict with construction
schedules, the church's multiuse campus was also busy throughout
the week.
"Everybody knew that starting this building would have
an impact on parking and different things," Mueller said.
"But I don't think anybody really knew how large and what
the impact would be. It has been a matter of living with each
other in a constant give and take."
And then there was winter.
"We had a very cold January, but Pepper was able to isolate
areas within the building and put in temporary heating for the
winter," Troeger said. "They poured concrete floors
and did MEP work in those temporarily heated areas while they
were still putting up the steel structure in other areas."
In addition to the large auditorium, the structure contains
a 20-ft.-deep basement that will house children's ministries
and activities along with support services for the auditorium. |
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