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Strategic Facility Planning and Design
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Sports facility design and management is a complex, ever-evolving field that requires careful planning and execution, and where poor planning can be costly. In this Episode, we'll explore various aspects of facility design and management, from cost-saving measures to technology integration and future prospects. Whether you're a facility manager or an enthusiast, this blog will provide valuable insights to enhance your understanding of this dynamic field.
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Transcript
Transforming Mid-America Sports Complex
00:00:00
Speaker
On this episode of the Facility Playbook, I got to sit down with Vance Repka of VSR Design. We met at an in Mid-America sports complex where he helped revamp that entire baseball facility into a turf complex with new lighting, new food and beverage, pretty much upgraded everything about the facility that's been around for 20 to 30 years. So whether you're building a new facility or revamping your old one, you're going to want to listen to this episode with Vance. Hope you enjoy.
00:00:28
Speaker
Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally, and this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues, and clubs.
00:00:46
Speaker
Did you know that most of those facilities use between four and six different softwares to manage the reservations, memberships, lessons, leagues, camps, clinics, and more? Revolutionize your facility with Facility Ally's all-in-one system. Learn more at facilityallyy.com. Today,
00:01:01
Speaker
We're actually talking a little bit deeper into facilities, not about management, not really about oversight, but more about the design planning and redesign. And today we're here with Vance Repka from VSR Design. It's so great to have you here today. Thanks for being with me. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I listen to your podcast, so it's great to be on one.
00:01:19
Speaker
That's awesome, I appreciate that.
Journey of Landscape Architect Vance Repka
00:01:21
Speaker
And can you, before we jump in, tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into your VSR design company. Okay, so I'm a landscape architect. I got my degree in 1984 from K-State. I'm originally from St. Louis, but went to K-State and have been working in Kansas City since really the first of 1985. Worked for a couple of the big sports firms, HNTB and then the Populis.
00:01:47
Speaker
guys and then I've been on my own for about 20 years and worked from essentially major league baseball and NFL football all the way down to small parks and rec and any other kind of sports facility design.
00:02:03
Speaker
Um, that's awesome. You've been through a lot. You've done a lot. You've worked with some of the really big companies, uh, also in Kansas City, which is my favorite. I love that you're here now and yeah, I consider you a local. I always ask people how long before I say I'm from Kansas City because I'm not from here either, but I've been here about 15, 20 years. So you're from Kansas.
00:02:18
Speaker
I'm from Kansas City now. Well, can you talk about maybe some of the projects?
Unique Sports Projects and Renovation Challenges
00:02:22
Speaker
You know, today we're here at Johnson County. We're at the Mid America Sports Complex. I actually met you at the Shields complex with Michael LaPlante. So you've gotten around town a little bit. Can you tell us about some of the cool unique projects that you worked on?
00:02:35
Speaker
Well, I started sort of in the sports side in a big way in 1994, the strike year. And when I was at HNTB, we were tasked with converting Kauffman Stadium from the old artificial astroturf
00:02:50
Speaker
that was laid over asphalt into natural grass. And so my golf course design background led me into that project because of the understanding of how grass grows in sand. And so we converted that field in 94. From there, I went over to Populous. It was HOK Sport at the time, but it's Populous now.
00:03:11
Speaker
and worked with them on fields like that all over the country, actually all over the world. And so that's been great. What's one of the most unique projects you've worked on or your favorite project? Well, I think they're all my favorites. He's kind of like asking a parent, who's your favorite kid? They're all my favorites and they're all a little bit different. We do some high school stadium work and some of those have been a lot of fun because you have
00:03:40
Speaker
full design on a greenfield site. You're able to, you know, in one site in Sedalia, we were able to bury the field in the track down in the hillside and had a really nice setting for the field and the architects on our team, you know, designed the stadium around it to make it feel like almost like a college bowl is what it was.
00:03:59
Speaker
So those are lots of fun. This is a glass and this is a renovation to go from really a 30 year old worn down place that needed a facelift. And we've kind of gone a little bit beyond that with fencing, backstops, incorporated a lot of shade, new lighting, and then the facility like this with more fan accommodation than used to have in the old types of parks and rec type facilities.
00:04:28
Speaker
So they're all my favorites. I know that's kind of a chicken way of answering that question, but they're all different. They're all fun, whether it's natural grass or artificial. I enjoy doing both and embrace both. And so it's been great. So this was a really, really big one. How many fields are here that you actually did the redesign on?
00:04:49
Speaker
So on this facility, there are 12. There are 10 300-foot softball fields for adult and youth. And they're also used a lot for youth baseball as well. And at Mid-America West, which will be another phase starting up this fall, there's another 12 fields there. And those are smaller
00:05:14
Speaker
essentially girls softball because they were 200-foot fields for the most part and some of the younger youth baseball can play on those fields as well. So all 12 fields were re-turfed, re-done and you were part of all that?
Considerations for Facility Expansion
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah. So what's something that a facility like this or even smaller should think about before they consider an expansion or redesign? What are some of the things that should be top of the list?
00:05:37
Speaker
Well, I think when you consider it, I mean, so this project started in a couple of phases, as a matter of fact, and it was, hey, we've got to get rid of our fences. The old galvanized chain link and the backstops were kind of falling down and needed to be repaired. So as we repaired all of the fencing, we essentially put, and if you can look out there, you see a concrete mow strip around all of the fencing. And so that's what you need to do, synthetic turf. You attach that synthetic turf to that curb.
00:06:07
Speaker
So with natural materials, you don't need that curb. So we incorporated that. It was a little bit of an upcharge to get that done right away. And as it turns out, we did the turf about a year later.
00:06:23
Speaker
so it really wasn't an upcharge. But that did save money on the next phase because you don't have to do that curb anymore. And I've done some renovations where the fence stays in place and you try to pour a curb around an existing fence and it's not a lot of fun and it's not easy and it costs a lot.
00:06:40
Speaker
because there's just a lot of labor associated with that. So you try to think as far as you can, are we going to do synthetic turf someday, depending on where you are. Maybe the initial goal, but it may be a long-term goal. And so you incorporate some of those things. There's also the playability of turf.
00:07:00
Speaker
synthetic turf versus natural and so when you have long grass the ball tends to stop with baseball and soccer and so you you also need to have you know surface drainage so that tends to be a steeper slope so when you take a steeper slope type field and put synthetic on it which is like a short pile carpet almost
00:07:22
Speaker
that ball can roll for days and soccer coaches love that typically at the high end at the bottom end they don't and you know this is not the George Tomah era of water the grass real heavy when you have a fast team coming in so that they can't run fast and the ball dies if they try to bunt sure you don't get to do that on synthetic it's gonna be fast no matter what you do
00:07:44
Speaker
So it's that sort of thing. You try to incorporate game strategy, you know, understanding what those long term goals are and find out what budgets are. Let's face it, budgets, big deal with pretty much any business nowadays. So when you went in to do the fencing, they had the foresight to say we're going to do turf someday, so we should probably put this curb in.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, now we didn't know if it was one year or 10 years, but either way, it was going to save us in the future. And so that was one thing they considered. What was the reason they decided to switch to turf instead of grass? And I know this is a big discussion, you know, Messi doesn't play on turf and some people don't play on turf. And so, you know, as a facility at this size, it's throwing huge tournaments. You know, why would someone decide, hey, let's switch to turf or let's stick to grass? What are some of the benefits?
00:08:31
Speaker
Well, and so the biggest thing here is this is a facility that hosts a lot of tournaments, like you said. And it's kind of like when Kaufman and Arrowhead were originally artificial turf.
00:08:46
Speaker
They went to artificial turf because people were going to come from all over the place to see games here. You know, the Kansas City metro area isn't reliant on, you know, isn't going to take care of all of the attendance and all of the teams that play here. People are here from Iowa. I mean, you see Iowa and Nebraska license plates at Oklahoma from all over the place, the Dakotas, you name it. And so when those people come into town, they don't want to have the chance of a rainout.
00:09:12
Speaker
so when they know they won't be rained out. Now the fact of the matter is when it's raining you're not playing but after the raid is done you can get right back on it. You don't have to go work on the infield and put down the kitty litter and the diamond dry and all that kind of stuff and work it and work it and work it. Facilities like this unless you're at the major league or minor league level or division one where you have a tarp
00:09:37
Speaker
to roll out over your infield. There's no way a place like this is gonna have 12 tarps and 15 people to unroll and roll those tarps. And so, you know, Major League Baseball can do that because they've got, you know, a lot of people that can roll it and unroll it before and after a rate event. You can't do that here. And so, with the synthetic and, you know, when this place was first built, these four diamonds actually had an infield
00:10:06
Speaker
that was made out of the artificial turf, same thing that Kaufman and Arrowhead had. And that became, this facility really was a huge adult men's softball. It was a big, big time, big mecca for the nationwide. And so as other facilities upgraded and they started to put some of this latest generation of artificial turf on, this facility sort of
00:10:31
Speaker
dropped in the rankings, if you will, and so we wanted to get back up there. I can't quote you dollars, but it brings in tons of economic development. The tournament fees and that sort of thing are one thing, and the restaurant and the food and beverage here is increased a lot from those tournaments, but the economic development of
00:10:54
Speaker
of just hotel rooms and restaurants and everything else and just filling up your cars with gas here. That is huge. The city of Shawnee can probably give you numbers on what that means to them, but that's a big deal. Now back to the turf question, why does it messy play on synthetic? It's a huge debate in the industry.
Synthetic Turf: Benefits and Controversies
00:11:16
Speaker
We saw Aaron Rodgers go down with a torn Achilles a couple of weeks ago and immediately everybody blamed it on the synthetic turf.
00:11:24
Speaker
Um, you know, the, the NFL PA is generally against it. You know, I kind of counted up the number of NFL stadiums and there's, there's, I think there's about 10 stadiums out of the 32 that have synthetic turf. Now, when you're at a dome, unless you have the hundred million dollar roll in and roll out and I make that.
00:11:45
Speaker
budget number up, but like Las Vegas does and like Phoenix does, you're not going to retrofit a stadium to do that. You can do it with pans and things to roll turf in and out, but when you're in the northern climates,
00:12:02
Speaker
Nothing's growing in Indianapolis or in Green Bay or anything, so it really doesn't do you any good to take it outside. So there are the theories, anyway, in some of the feelings that natural grass is a little more forgiving than the synthetic. And it all depends on the synthetic, and it all depends on the natural grass.
00:12:27
Speaker
You know, when you're playing on the frozen tundra in Green Bay and if that's frozen solid, it's not a very forgiving surface. But there are part of the newer versions of synthetic turf allow you to put a pad underneath it and help with that concussion problem.
00:12:45
Speaker
It allows you to put different infills in so that your feet grip there's there's cleat You know, there's there's research done on the cleat of The cleats of shoes and whether they grab too much or slip too much. It's it's all become sort of science now And it's way beyond my pay grade same but it that's that's part of the deal and I and I think that FIFA and a bunch of the
00:13:12
Speaker
The soccer folks, especially from Europe, don't want to play in synthetic turf. Kind of a preference. And I think for a facility like this, who's obviously not at a high level of FIFA or the NFL, you know, they really, I think the main points that you said, it was like rain, right? Rain outs. Like since it's mostly tournaments and traveling, that's horrible for the families, the people that are staying here, all that kind of stuff.
00:13:37
Speaker
So that's a big piece of it. And to your point was like maintenance, I feel like as well, right? There's less no mowing, you know, I feel like you save a lot of money on that side of things. So that's, that's, I think it's, in my opinion, it's preference, right? Like, right, it's really hard to prove whether somebody's getting injured more, the plays that different on turf versus grass, unless there's studies out there, I'd love to see them. But, but I think it really comes down to preference. And for a facility like this, it's mostly youth or, you know, low in a competitiveness, it's more about people want to play.
00:14:04
Speaker
they're not worried about the actual turf they're playing on. And so as long as it's not raining them out, and they're able to play, then that's really what they care about. Right, exactly. Yeah, cool. So some of the other things we talked about a little bit earlier was, you know, lighting. And so I know you mentioned you did the fencing first, you know, you then went in with the turf was the lighting done at the same time you mentioned, you know, LED versus normal lighting. So we're gonna get into another battle of what's right.
00:14:26
Speaker
Well and and so yeah so the next project after we did all the fencing and the back stops we did dugouts and we did seating and shade as part of that seating for for all 24 fields. We came in to do really renovate this facility and so there was a whole team of of architects and engineers and and different people to do you know playground designers and everything to to renovate this and part of it was the sports lighting and
00:14:55
Speaker
The older sports lighting was not bad. It was still good technology, but it wasn't new technology. And the light levels had degraded a little bit. And so we've replaced everything with LED. So it does help with your operating costs, obviously. It's nice that there's incredible cutoff. I won't dive into the details of that. But in the old days,
00:15:22
Speaker
That field, just the backlighting in the spill from those lights would light this whole area up at night. It's dark here. We have to have our own whole set of lights to put light on this. And so behind those poles, it's really dark.
00:15:39
Speaker
And so that creates its own issues as well, because we used to rely on that spill for concourse lighting and other things, and now it's no longer there. Yeah. So that's a negative in some degree. It is, in some degree. Now, neighbors will love it because, you know, and in a facility like this where you have multiple fields all playing at the same time, the spill, the light that shines, you know, kind of
00:16:06
Speaker
horizontally that would be in your eyes. So if you're on an outfield here and you're looking at a pop fly from over there, those lights aren't going to blind you now with this new LED technology. It's so focused on the field that you don't have that glare. You don't lose the ball in lights from a different field.
00:16:23
Speaker
And that's also the positive for if we had neighbors here, we don't have any neighbors here, but we've got, there's a number of facilities that are built with neighbors, you know, a hundred feet away and houses. And so that's one of their biggest complaints. They don't really, they can't really complain about it anymore.
00:16:39
Speaker
Now they just complain about noise and cheering. There's always some kids here. So then financially, it sounds like there's a lot of benefits, a couple negatives. You have to put more lighting in in some scenarios because you're not getting that spillover. But financially, you know, is it worth it in your opinion to go LED today? Even it may take several years to pay for. Yeah, it'll take a long time. I mean, depending on how old your lights were.
00:17:02
Speaker
that you're replacing, if they were only 5 or 10 years old, those were pretty efficient lights. And so the cost savings probably isn't going to pay for itself for 10, 15, maybe 20 years. But these new LED lights will last, I won't say forever, but a lot longer without having to be relamped. The other ones had sort of big bulbs that would have to be relamped.
00:17:28
Speaker
you know, every thousand hours of use or whatever their number was. I don't, I don't know exactly what it is, but they'd have to be relamped depending on how much you use. So like shields, the Orland Park soccer they'd have, they run their facilities so often or so much that they have to relamp much more often than a typical high school or, you know, even colleges do or, or even a parks and rec kind of facility.
LED Lighting and Financial Planning
00:17:53
Speaker
Cause this place will shut down from November through March.
00:17:57
Speaker
virtually shut down. And they don't. I mean, they practice 12 months a year, and they have those lights on all the time. And so they relamp all the time. And so that's why we're going through an RFP to relamp or to redo the lighting it shields with Mike as we speak. So it depends on the facility, kind of their planning and how much they use it and all that. Yeah, the more you use it, the more savings you get. OK. Believe it or not, it's kind of a weird little affair.
00:18:27
Speaker
you know, sort of play there, but the more you use it, the more it helps. And really, the other part is the quality of light and the uniformities. You have to see them side by side or go from one facility to the next, you know, in the same night. And it's pretty remarkable how much better the light is.
00:18:47
Speaker
that's awesome well so since we're talking about kind of like finances and you know kind of cost savings and things like that what are some of the things that a facility should think about when it comes to financial planning for a revamp or you know building out something like this from the beginning like what are some of the top things that hey when you're planning out your finances for your project these are the things you need to consider yeah i mean other than i mean we all
00:19:06
Speaker
Every architect and engineer is going to come to you with initial costs of how to construct this and how to build it or how to demo something and take it out. The real issue that I think people forget about is while they are reducing the amount of water and fertilizer and other things that they're going to put on their lawn and they don't have to mow anymore,
00:19:27
Speaker
They still have to do a little bit of maintenance, but in 10 years you're going to have to replace that turf, and that's not cheap. And so it's always better. Mike over at Shields knows that, and he's been putting money away. The guys here with Johnson County, they know that, and so they are going to start to put money away, and so that in 10 years they can replace the turf. So that's like the big ticket item. Everything else is to try to
00:19:52
Speaker
When we do new facilities, we try to design ballplexes like this so fields are close enough together so we can share light poles and you don't have, you know, six or eight per field, the ones that are in between, you can kind of share that pole and light from both directions.
00:20:08
Speaker
So there's things like that that have been been the issue forever. A lot of times we know with soccer, soccer and lacrosse is becoming a much bigger sport now. But even if it's just soccer, you play a lot of small sided games where they're not the full length. You don't really need the full length field.
00:20:29
Speaker
And so you gotta be able to flip the fields 90 degrees and run smaller, you know, smaller sides, you know, up to three on three and you may have like 12 or 16 fields for one field. So take that into consideration. The other part of that is when the younger your kid, the kids that are playing, the more people come to watch. So grandpas and grandmas come and watch those games. And it's like the tee ball when you do a little tee ball field,
00:20:57
Speaker
you'll have more people for that field watching that game than you will for two high school baseball games. Because not everybody is going to travel. And it's, you know, Johnny or Susie's first game and everybody wants to see it. So we talked about, you know, the turf and putting money away. That's always makes sense, right? Save for future maintenance. So maintenance, obviously, number one, lighting, turf, you know, is there any others that you think are like big ticket items when you're designing or revamping a facility?
00:21:27
Speaker
No, I mean, that's the biggest thing. I mean, those are the big ones. I mean, the parking, you always try to allow yourself to have...
00:21:35
Speaker
to add parking. It's an old saying now in the real estate business, but you really hate to build your parking lot for the day after Thanksgiving. Now with all the online buying and stuff, it's not as big a deal. But in the old days, that day after Thanksgiving, parking lots at all the malls were just packed. And so what you don't want to do is that you may have three tournaments here a year that are just massive. And so if you build enough paved parking for that,
00:22:02
Speaker
You're only going to use 50, 60, 70% of that the rest of the year. So if you can, try to allow for some grass parking, you know, that's just some overflow parking. You know, other facilities have arrangements with other facilities nearby that maybe you can park there and shuttle people back and forth.
00:22:19
Speaker
Um, those sorts of things kind of help you long-term, but you gotta have to think long-term and a lot of it's league versus tournament.
Flexible Field Design and Food Services
00:22:27
Speaker
Um, and the other thing is try to build in flexibility with field size. Um, so this, they will, uh, they have temporary fences, um, that are, you know, they're distorted and they'll, and they'll put them out on this field so that this can be a 200 foot field.
00:22:44
Speaker
So when they get the fields on the other side of the road down at Turf and a permanent 200 foot field, and they put the temporary fences here, you've got 20 fields, 200 foot, especially for girls fast-pitched softball. I mean, that really gets you all the way through college. And so the thought is you can have high school, college showcases, you can have big tournaments, all kinds of things open up for you. And they do big tournaments here.
00:23:13
Speaker
during the summer, but some of that flexibility, because on those 200-foot fields, you can't play men's softball on it. It's too small. But you could always take those fences up and do it here. That's one of the things I always say is try and be flexible, right? If you can have a volleyball court, be a basketball court, and a pickleball court, be a futsal court, be flexible, because you never know what you may want to do or need to do in the future. Yeah, pickleball and tennis are a perfect example. And I don't know if tennis is going to come back.
00:23:42
Speaker
And I don't know if pickleball is ever going to go out of favor. I mean, today it doesn't look like it looks like tennis will be steady at a small rate and pickleball is only going to grow.
00:23:53
Speaker
Nothing is forever. So I always look at when we do tennis courts and pickleball courts, let's make sure that we can restripe in the future if we need to. That's great. So what's something when a facility comes to you and they're like, hey, we want to do X, Y, and Z. Is there something you wish they'd have thought about or planned more in advance before they come to you?
00:24:15
Speaker
You know, not not really because most of them come to us without any knowledge It's it's nice when they know how to run it when they know how they're gonna run concessions You know, there's a there's a newer, you know doing the grab and go now like a
00:24:31
Speaker
like a quick trip model where you just go in and grab food and go to a station. A lot of that is driven by the difficulty in getting staff to run a concession stand and having a full kitchen. So this facility has a nice full kitchen and that was part of the reason they built this and rebuilt the whole facility was to have different food offerings. And so it's hard to retrofit that if you start with the plain old concession stand that has
00:24:58
Speaker
You've got restrooms on one side, and you've got just the concessions on another, and you've got your window, and you've got hot dog rollers and popcorn.
00:25:07
Speaker
It's hard to put a full kitchen in there. And so knowing that sort of food service is important to know ahead of time and not figure that out later. But most of the time, it seems like most people understand now what they need, at least from the big level. And they don't know how to design it and how to carry it out or carry it through construction. But they know everyone seems to be much more educated than they used to be.
00:25:33
Speaker
Now we still do get people, and this is the one thing that is interesting, is that these kinds of facilities are not just cash cows. Everybody thinks, because I have calls from people in rural areas that say, hey, I've got 40 acres, and I've seen my kids go play baseball at this other place.
00:25:53
Speaker
I want to build one of those and just start raking in the cash. And so when you start to tell them how many millions of dollars it's going to take, they get kind of quiet and say, well, yeah, maybe that's not. So what if I don't do turf? How much is natural grass? And so it's significantly less, but it's not. And you still have parking.
00:26:14
Speaker
And you still have your buildings and you still try to do batting cages and warm up areas and it all the square footage doesn't go down. It's just that square foot for that turf. And then you have the you're taking the risk of losing rain outs. So yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned food and beverage. You know, how does that play into when you're designing facilities talking turf lighting? You know, how does food beverage play into like what a facility should be thinking about when they're designed?
00:26:39
Speaker
Well, and so, yeah, so food and beverage is big. I mean, that's really where most of these folks will make money. And, you know, the fees and everything, the tournaments, those will cover officials. They'll cover the staff to kind of clean the place. But if you want to make money over that, a lot of times it's food and beverage. And so when we do these, the designs, when it's multi-fields such as this, we try to funnel people through.
00:27:08
Speaker
very select spots so that when you you either take gate and you control everybody you don't want to have five gates and have to have five people try to take you know five bucks ahead or ten bucks and and hope that that works we have we've got everybody coming through one gate here and and so
00:27:30
Speaker
Part of the design of this was as you come in that gate, the first thing you see at a distance is this facility, which is food and beverage. And so that's always an issue. And when you turn down each alley, you can see that. Well, I don't know if you can see that in the distance. As you turn down there, that was very specific that when you walk down there to get to those four fields, it says concessions.
00:27:50
Speaker
You know, restrooms are on the other side. You don't walk into the place and say, oh, a restroom. It's like, I can't wait. And so both sides do that. And so the buildings actually mirror each other, and they are so that they say concessions. And we try, if you can, to put a facility like this in a location where everybody passes back throughout. So it's the old Disney mousetrap where Billy and Susie want to get that
00:28:17
Speaker
that power aid or whatever the drink or the cotton candy or whatever it is as they pass through. And so you start that with your design. Now upgrading the type of facility, you know, the type of food offerings is different. And that just means you probably means a bigger building. You've got other infrastructure underground to take care of, you know, the cooking waste and that sort of thing.
00:28:41
Speaker
You know, the one thing that came up here that we underestimated a little bit is when they run these big
00:28:48
Speaker
national, regional, national men's softball tournaments, they're able to sell a lot of beer. And coupled with the fact that a few years ago, there were the driver shortages. And so where you would normally have the Budweiser truck come up every day, pick up old empty kegs and take them back and give you new ones, they said, we're delivering on Thursday night and we're coming back Monday. So we got to give you all those kegs right now
00:29:19
Speaker
And so storage and even storage for the empties was a problem. And so we've built some ancillary facilities, just fenced in areas that are kind of out of sight that we can store those empty kegs. Things I would not have thought about. No. And you know, we didn't even think about it. And a lot of it really
00:29:37
Speaker
came from that trucker shortage. Truck drivers were just in a shortage back as we came out of the pandemic. I don't think it's as big an issue now, but something to definitely think about. And so to kind of recap that is, since food and beverage is such a big piece and makes most of the money, putting it forefront right when they walk in, seeing it here, seeing it there, making it easy. And it seems like, like you said,
00:30:03
Speaker
hot dog rollers and popcorn. When I grew up, you know, it was like grab the candy bar or whatever, right? But now it's a little bit more expanded. Like we're here all day, you know, give me something good to eat, give me some barbecue. And so taking it and making it a little bit nicer and offering better food. Right. Yeah. And so we've got smokers here. We've got allocations to have smokers here. And as you know, being from Kansas City, you know, that smoke wafts throughout the whole area and it makes you more hungry. And it's awesome. And even at older facilities that we've done,
00:30:29
Speaker
Even if you just bring a little Weber grill out and start to grill burgers and hot dogs, you know, that's a better offering than something you're getting off of, you know, off of a flat top. And so those things matter. So if we incorporate it, it just makes it easier to run, easier to, you know, to clean. The whole thing just makes it much more efficient. Sure.
00:30:49
Speaker
So for most of the facilities you work with, do you see any sort of new technology or anything that's being infused with some of these facilities?
Enhancing Facilities with Technology
00:30:56
Speaker
Well, we see some outside of the technology of the LED lights.
00:31:05
Speaker
We have cable that goes to the front desk so that there can be point of sale there. So when people come in, and that can come back to wherever the brains are in this building. And so there's some of that technology, check into your teams and all that sort of thing to try to do that much more electronically. There are some facilities that will have some cameras on every field.
00:31:34
Speaker
so that grandma and grandpa from North Dakota that can't drive down for the tournament can get into a little subscription and watch the kids play on the field. We don't have that here yet, but I think that's in the makings and I know that Shields is looking at it and a lot of those places are that run those tournaments. Colleges tend to do that, I think they're forced to do that by their
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah. Even my, you know, my nephews, I was able to watch his high school games live. You know, they're doing it at the high school level now for sure. So with cameras, obviously you need Wi-Fi. So that's probably a big... Well, and Wi-Fi is, yeah, is required everywhere now. I mean, it's got to be everywhere. I don't know the specifics of it, but I know that it's... Wherever you put it, it's like it's not enough now. Because now there's too many people on it. They know there's Wi-Fi here, so now it's really slow. And so whatever that...
00:32:29
Speaker
whatever that technological innovation is, you got to do more of it. And so you got to figure on more of it. I would tell people to always run bunches of spare conduits when they're running, you know, wiring to light poles, run an extra conduit, and just try to run it throughout the whole facility because you just never know. You don't really want to break up any concrete to get into the building. And so you just have conduit out of the building, out of the back, and so you can route it around.
00:32:57
Speaker
So we do that pretty regularly on all of our sports facilities, underneath running tracks at high schools and everything. We always have extra conduit so that you don't ever disturb some of the hardscape that's put in play. That's great. So what's one thing that you don't want to hear when a facility comes to you for a redesign or planning project?
00:33:20
Speaker
There's one thing that makes me nervous, and sometimes it works out great, sometimes it doesn't. And it's when somebody comes to us and says, we want to do this new facility, and we've got a lot of our own volunteers that are going to help do it. And so I've had some that that works out great. And they know their place. They'll come in. You know, we get in.
00:33:43
Speaker
the remote areas will get farmers that come and move dirt basically for free. And you can't get that in town here anyway. And so you kind of have to be careful. And what I always caution people is that
00:33:56
Speaker
Volunteer labor is great. I mean, take advantage of it as you can, but volunteer anything is volunteer. And it doesn't necessarily come on your schedule. So if you're in a deadline and you want to get this field done quick or this facility done quick, that may not happen because somebody may have to go out of town on a business trip. And so then they can't be there that weekend. And so that really puts you behind. But that's the scary one.
00:34:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, and we run into this a lot with events. I work with a lot of nonprofits and they're like, we're going to have 30 volunteers, 40 volunteers. And I'm always like, well, what happens if they don't show up? Well, they don't have a backup plan. And what happens is most time they don't show up. And so I always tell them the best way to guarantee somebody shows up is to pay them. And you want them to do the best job ever? Pay them well. Exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. And we do have a lot of times we'll do fields where we're converting
00:34:49
Speaker
You know, the sacred football field of some high school into synthetic turf and everybody wants it. You know, I know everybody's going to want a piece of the old grass that's on that field. And so we're going to have, you know, a sod cutter out here and we're going to, and everybody's going to take a chunk, put it in their trunk or put it in their pickup.
00:35:06
Speaker
Nobody ever shows up for that. I mean, they just don't. You got a truck full of... Yeah. And it's like, well, okay, we just wasted a whole weekend and the contractor could have just plowed it all under and taken it away. So those sorts of things, they're kind of funny, but they don't really hurt being that much. But you have to be careful about volunteer labor and getting that... I mean, the other part is some of the... If I have a local contractor,
00:35:30
Speaker
that does certain trades. So some of the concrete curbing, some of the grading. So the precision that you need with a synthetic turf is far beyond doing a parking lot curb. It's far beyond the asphalt in your parking lot is nothing near what you need to do for a high school running track. The precision that you need for some of those facilities
00:35:56
Speaker
is well beyond what a lot of the normal contractors can do. And that's why they're specialists that just build tracks and fields and courts. And that's all they do. And so you have to be aware of some of that, hey, I got a local guy that will do this for me. A local guy that wants to do some of the landscaping, that's fine.
00:36:14
Speaker
But beyond that, you just got to be careful. It makes sense. Going back to the Wi-Fi real quick, I had a thought, and I know a lot of facilities miss out on this, but have you ever seen the facilities who could put an email in or to get access to the Wi-Fi? And I know you're not a Wi-Fi expert, but I always find that I feel like it's a missed opportunity, right? You have thousands of people here. And most of the time, if it's a tournament organizer that's running it all at you, is the facility don't get their information, they're contacted, which is valuable as a facility.
00:36:40
Speaker
My thought is always like, why aren't they gating this with an email or a phone number to access the Wi-Fi? And so I didn't know if that came up at all in any of your facilities. It doesn't to me. You know, the landscape architect isn't the Wi-Fi or I get it. But that's, yeah, so I mean, you know, keep doing those podcasts and tell the guys that operate. I mean, to me, that's kind of the magic, to be honest with you. I think my job's easy compared to what they do. And that really makes the place operate. You know, without people here and without the revenue, it doesn't really
00:37:09
Speaker
It doesn't matter how great this is. Other than volunteers, is there any strange request? What's the strangest request you got from a facility? I really haven't had that many strange requests. I think you get more of those at the higher levels when you're doing suites and when you're doing
00:37:33
Speaker
coaches boxes and things, and in something that's regarding recruiting, at these rec level things, there really isn't ... I mean, we do have some of the grounds people that think that they would love this whole thing to be concrete, and so they wouldn't have to mow at all. But as you can see, they do a great job here.
00:37:54
Speaker
but it's maintenance, and everybody has pressure to keep your costs down, and that's one of the things. It's not a weird request, but it's, yeah, I don't really have any weird requests. I wish I did. Well, that's not, no, that's not a bad thing at all. So, you know, if you started all over today with facility design, obviously the world's changed a lot since 1985, you know, what would be one thing you'd do differently? I, you know, I don't know if I would,
00:38:22
Speaker
I kind of look back and think I would have maybe taken a different path and kind of looked at things, but things have worked out pretty well for me, and so I don't know that I would change that as much.
00:38:34
Speaker
Really, the computer-aided technology of doing drawings and things kind of happened shortly after I came out into the world. We had none of that kind of stuff in school. And so everybody from my age and older really is at a disadvantage when it comes to that sort of technology. I've embraced it, and I do a lot of that CAD work myself now.
00:38:56
Speaker
I wish I had gone a little bit further and knew a little bit more and did more 3D renderings. So the architecture firm that did all the vertical stuff here, they've got a guy that built the whole facility in 3D. And some of his original pictures, especially like of this facility, there'd be a picture out there looking through here. And I look at those old renderings from three or four years ago and think,
00:39:19
Speaker
Is that a picture or is that real? And it's gotten that good. So that would be good because what I do know is that facility owners, for the most part,
00:39:32
Speaker
have a difficult time reading blueprints and plants. And so stuff that we draw in 2D, I will draw a circle or a square or a field.
3D Technology in Facility Design
00:39:43
Speaker
And instantly, in my mind, it's all in three dimensions. I mean, it looks like that. I can visualize the backstop and everything.
00:39:51
Speaker
Nobody else can do that. I mean, not nobody else, but the non-design professional doesn't see it that way. And so being able to show that in a 3D format, and it's getting better and better and faster and faster and cheaper for us to do. It used to be you'd have to hire an artist to spend a week trying to draw a helicopter shot.
00:40:14
Speaker
We didn't have drones then either. So those are new. But yeah, so that's probably all I would do. I mean, I really wouldn't change a whole lot. I think your path from big firm to little firm is all just personal preference, whether you like it or not. I mean, there are times I love being on my own. There are times I hate it.
00:40:33
Speaker
But and there was the same way with a big firm. There were times that I loved it and times that I hated it. And so it's I wouldn't change anything. I'd probably get into the technology a little bit.
00:40:45
Speaker
I mean, especially when a technology first starts, you don't know if it's a fad or a real technology. And so we were not real sure, because at the time, the computer-aided drafting took a long time. It was not faster than hand-drafting. And so most of the people were like, you know, I'm out. That doesn't really seem to be very promising.
00:41:06
Speaker
nobody draws by hand or hardly. So you've done baseball, soccer, tennis, pro level, you know, pickleball, all the different things. So what does the next three years look like for you and VSR design?
00:41:19
Speaker
Well, it's, like I said, the next complex is over the next couple of years, two or three years of the softball and baseball. And there are football conversions from natural grass to synthetic. That happens all the time. And my sort of radius of where I'll work is
00:41:43
Speaker
4-5 hours, 6 hour drive, radius kind of thing, actually more than that probably, but that's what I see a lot of.
00:41:56
Speaker
I see people keep on building sports facilities. The colleges keep upgrading and I think it just keeps ratcheting up. There will potentially be another facility that wants to compete with this facility that has to get designed. Those sorts of things just seem to keep coming. I don't typically try to count on it.
00:42:20
Speaker
And I wouldn't tell you that I can predict the future. You know, when I left Populos, because I was a little bit more tired of travel than anything, I kind of thought, you know what? All the NFL games are new now, and they're all been rebuilt. Division I colleges have got to stop at some point. You know, that was 25 years ago.
00:42:41
Speaker
I was definitely wrong about that. So I'm not a prognosticator of what's going to happen by any means, but that's what I would see.
00:42:52
Speaker
I think things are still going to keep growing and things are more fan focused now than they used to be. You know, my focus has always been because it's at the rec level on the play itself. And so the priorities start inside the fence and then kind of move out beyond that. And I think once you get to the higher level, it's all fan experience and there's a lot more. So I just kind of do sort of the basic stuff and the real
00:43:17
Speaker
the real new cool stuff is based around the fan experience and keeping those people engaged. I'm a baseball guy, so I hope that baseball, I'm looking forward to it moving downtown.
00:43:34
Speaker
I don't know if that's a reality or not, but I think there's a lot of energy with baseball and being next to a place like a power and light and energizing those areas. I don't see that with footballs because you're only playing eight.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think with that many games a year, you want people to come, you got to put it closer to everybody. And so having it downtown, you get tourism, you get the people that are living down there, whereas like the Chiefs Stadium, which I'm a huge Chiefs guy, I want to go and tailgate and be out in the park and you want the space. And so I think it's definitely a different experience. But, well, if you're a facility manager or owner, hopefully you got something out of the design planning from this.
00:44:08
Speaker
with Vance, thank you so much for coming on. If you're looking to manage your facility, your reservations, your memberships, your lessons, camps, clinics, and more, check out facilityally.com. If you're looking to learn more about facility management, design, and more, make sure you check out the next episode of Facility Playbook. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. See you next week.