Where The Metals Meet
Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex brings vibrancy to underserved community
By Linda Mastaglio
Photos: Obama Sports Complex
The 24-acre Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex at Rancho Cienega Park fills an important need in South Los Angeles, providing quality public-recreation and fitness amenities for a population of approximately 100,000 people. The complex, which opened in June 2022, is a tribute to the former First Lady and President, who held his first Los Angeles-area campaign rally in the park. Before its connection to the 44th president, the park gained notoriety because tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams trained at the complex when they were children.
To enhance the facility, the city invested $50 million in new construction, building an Olympic-size, indoor pool with a bathhouse, an indoor gym featuring two basketball courts, a mezzanine walking track, a fitness annex, a multi-use community room, and staff offices.
“We have a state-of-the-art facility here. We have a responsibility to give our kids every opportunity that they deserve, and this facility will do just that,” said Herb Wesson, Los Angeles City Council Member-District 10, in a recent video tour of the facility.
First, The People
Addressing community and programming concerns upfront was a critical component in planning. The park’s upgrade efforts began with a design competition, requiring all competing architecture and engineering firm teams to present their concepts to community stakeholders, which included families, business owners, and others who would use the facilities.
Three teams submitted designs, and the stakeholders then discussed alternatives and finally provided input into the elements and ideas that would best meet their expectations. The robust community-involvement program resulted in the selection of SPF:architects (SPF:a), Buro Happold Consulting Engineers, and landscape consultant Hood Design Studio. The team proposed two metal-building structures, which saved costs and allowed for an expansion of amenities. “We were able to make a bigger building but do it in a more cost-effective way,” explains SPF:a founder Zoltan Pali, FAIA, in an Architectural Folio prepared for architecture and engineering grad and undergrad students. “We could see that the more space, the better—the pool could be bigger; we could accommodate two courts instead of one; we could get more square footage and give constituents more of what they wanted.”
Design began in 2018, and construction was completed in 2022 by general contractor Pinner Construction with metal-building component erection by Pre-Fab Builders, Inc. While the timeline may appear extended for a project of this scope and size, the city was determined to allow minimal disruption to normal park events. According to the SPF:a website, this was “of great concern to the Obama Sports Complex leadership, as many buildings have received considerable upgrades in recent years, and leadership did not want to see any closures.”
Pali explains that initial bidding and ongoing cost impacts required careful planning. “Working with this building type, you have to design it so that not just one manufacturer can be utilized,” he says. “All metal-building suppliers have slightly different methodologies. [Before the building manufacturer was chosen] we had to create bid documents. We had to make choices and be as generic as possible, but specific enough to cover all the bases. It was a very difficult project but an interesting project and process.”
Scoring Zero
The project’s indoor basketball center is one of the first Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings built by the city. Through an audit of performance data, NZE certifies that a building harnesses energy from the sun, wind, or earth. One-hundred percent of the building’s energy needs on a net annual basis must be supplied by on-site renewable energy, and no combustion is allowed. The facility incorporates passive-energy features, including extensive daylighting through solar tubes, natural ventilation, and geothermal heating. Its rooftop photovoltaic solar array can generate more than 13 percent of the building’s energy requirements. North and south operable walls open to provide natural ventilation and increase the area inside the gym building.
In the second building, an existing swimming pool was decommissioned and reused as a storage tank that allows rainwater to be repurposed for irrigation, further improving the project’s sustainable credentials. A higher-than-standard number of electric vehicle-charging stations support the use of eco-friendly transportation, and bike racks promote transit use via the nearby Metrolink. A greywater re-use and stormwater infiltration system further supports the environmental mandate.
The city is also seeking LEED Silver certification through the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Metal Solution
The decision to use metal-building systems for the two, new park buildings has ultimately added value for the city. Tony Bouquot, general manager of the Metal Building Manufacturers Association, says the buildings were optimized to provide the most effective layout and structural design. “The pool and gymnasium buildings offer exceptional flexibility and opportunity to maximize space, while keeping costs in line with a very tight budget.”
According to Phil Skellorn, a senior structural project designer with Buro Happold, the frames of the metal buildings are highly optimized to provide an efficient means of achieving long-span, column-free spaces. “Metal-building frames will often be created from built-up tapered sections that have a depth that varies with the moment and sheer demands on the system,” he says. “As a structural engineer, it is always interesting to see the form following the function, and allowing the minimum use of material to achieve a design—with the important benefits of reduced cost and embodied carbon.”
To maintain an optimized solution with metal buildings, it is customary to allow for larger drift limits than in traditional building construction. All systems must be carefully coordinated and detailed to allow the building to move unimpeded during seismic and wind events. Where building systems are drift-controlled, relaxing the criteria can allow for significant savings in steel tonnage. For this project, the designers were dealing with signature architectural glazing, various cladding packages, and architectural volumes protruding through the façade. The design involved installing capture plates that the façade system slots into, allowing it to remain stationary and the structure to move around it during lateral drift.
“Metal buildings stand strong against extreme weather conditions,” says Bouquot. “Metal roofing, one element of a metal building, has been shown to withstand winds of 140 mph. In seismic zones, low-weight, flexible frame options offer higher resistance to tectonic forces.”
The building design was also impacted by challenging soil conditions. That part of Los Angeles where the park is located is swampy, and the site is on bedrock and below grade. The complexity required input from various civil and structural engineers. To secure the buildings, the foundations sit on a series of piles located under each footing to support building loads.
Linda Mastaglio is a veteran reporter who has written about architecture, engineering, and construction topics for publications worldwide. She can be reached at Linda@twi-pr.com.