Big Toys for Big Boys

Basketball Team Adds Large Gadgets to Practice Center

Multimedia upgrades to the Golden State Warriors' facility in Oakland were significant. Plasma TVs embedded in the wall of the locker room contain a touch-screen overlay, allowing the team's coaches and players to draw Xs and Os with their fingers. Jason Richardson, the team's top player, said the upgrades have made "one of the top facilities in the NBA even better."

By Brian Higgins

PHOTO BY BERNARD ANDRE

For the past decade, the only thing keeping pace with the bigger, faster and stronger athletes chasing the dream of professional stardom has been the frenetic construction of roomier, sleeker and plusher digs in which they ply their trades.

In California alone, cutting-edge major league baseball stadiums have brightened the skylines in San Diego and San Francisco. And the 5-year-old Staples Center in Los Angeles, with its 160 suites and 1,200 television monitors, plays hosts to two NBA teams and a NHL club.

In 1997, in conjunction with the gutting and rebuilding of the Oakland Arena, the Golden State Warriors built what was widely labeled as a state-of-the art practice facility covering 58,000 sq. ft. atop the parking garage of the downtown Oakland Convention Center.

In 1999, the American Institute of Steel Construction pinned its Engineering Award of Excellence on the project.

And then in 2004, the NBA club dialed up original architect Charles F. Jennings and ordered a $1.2 million renovation, which was completed in the summer.

"The overall goal of the project," Jennings said, "was to turn the area that the team uses into a private high-end practice facility and a club atmosphere," said Jennings, whose Oakland firm is also overhauling the basketball facilities at the University of San Francisco and St. Mary's College in Moraga.

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The decision to upgrade the practice facility was made after Bob Rowell, the team's president, made a clean sweep of his management ranks in the first half of 2004 by installing a new executive vice president of basketball operations (Chris Mullin), general manager (Rod Higgins) and coach (Mike Montgomery).

"We had to expand the weight room, so we had to knock down walls anyway," said Terry Robinson, the Warriors executive director of arena operations. "We figured we might as well upgrade everything we could at the same time."

Kai Wang, the project manager for general contractor Hathaway-Dinwiddie Construction Co., which also teamed with Jennings on the original project, said in the seven years since the facility was built, other teams caught up with and passed the Warriors. "They just wanted to make it one of the better facilities again," he added.

The original project, completed in early 1998, placed two full-length practice courts, a weight room, training room, team and staff lockers, video conference room, media room and staff offices atop the convention center's existing four-story parking garage.

It succeeded through innovation. The partial second floor of the practice complex containing offices overlooking the court was hung from the roof trusses, thereby placing all gravity loads near the transfer girder supports and on the existing heavy building columns, Wang said.

During this past summer's project, Wang said, "we tried to minimize structural modifications because of the short amount of time-a little under two months-that was involved." A few structural beams were added to support a chiller for a pool, and the training room, weight room and locker room were upgraded to cutting-edge specifications. Only 6,000 sq. ft., or 17 percent, of the practice facility was affected.

The Warriors' player's lounge includes 50- and 42-in. plasma TVs, electronic games and a pool table. Camcorder inputs in the chairs' armrests allow players to manipulate movies while being seated. San Leandro-based Design Consulting Engineering was the audio-video consultant for the project (photo by Bernard André).

The new plasma TVs embedded in the wall of the locker room contain a touch-screen overlay, allowing coaches and players to draw Xs and Os with their fingers.

Jennings converted the team's meeting room-a tiered, lecture-style classroom-into a players' lounge with all the audio-visual accoutrements.

AV consultant Michael Shilling, the owner of Design Consulting Engineering in San Leandro, installed 50- and 42-in. plasma TVs complete with electronic game systems and routed them through a stereo and wireless infrared listening system. There are inputs in the armrests for camcorders, allowing players instant playbacks of their own movies.

"All of these state-of-the-art upgrades have made one of the top facilities in the NBA even better," said forward Jason Richardson, the Warriors' top scorer. "The new player lounge gives us a place to hang out off the court. And the weight room is first class, with brand new equipment and plasma TVs everywhere you look."