New video board at the University of Oregons Hatfield-Dowlin Complex in Eugene includes 64 screens for a total 145,000-sq.-ft. display.
In late August, the University of Oregon put the finishing touches on the most impressive football complex in college sports by installing a gigantic video board in its lobby.
The video board, located just inside the entrance of the $68-million Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, acts as an enormous welcome mat to the Oregon Ducks' football team, coaches, visitors and recruits.
“The cool thing is that you can see it from the street,” Senior Associate Athletic Director Craig Pintens said. “At night it especially stands out because of the videos and the glass windows. You can see it as you drive by.”
Made up of 64 Planar MX55 LCD display TVs that are each 55 inches, the board is operated by two Mac minis which can play a single broadcast on all 64 TVs or 64 different programs at once.
“The lobby is the most transparent of the spaces where you can sense the blending of the exterior and interior,” said Firm 151 Interior Designer Randy Stegmeier. “And the digital wall gave us an opportunity to tell a story, to tell people that the university is leading the way technologically.”
Implementing the wall - which requires 16 Planar quad power supplies, 16 video boosters, around 20,000 feet of power and video cables and 600 feet of 4-inch conduit – took about three months for overseers Hoffman Construction.
Installation of the massive screen was the last piece of a 145,000-sq.-ft. puzzle that took 18 months to build.
The six-story complex, paid for by billionaire alum Phil Knight and his wife Penny and designed by ZGF Architects, is spread over three buildings and connected by a skybridge. Huge glass windows open the facility up to the rest of the campus with a view of the team's two practice fields.
Hatfield-Dowlin Complex features a list of amenities that might make some National Football League players and coaching staffs jealous.
“One of the things the designers did when they went to other schools to see facilities like this was ask: What would you do differently?” Pintens said. “That was a key thing for the design to ask that question. They based a lot of how they built the building on the answers.”
It has a 60,000-sq.-ft. weight and training room with a track that measures the efficiency and force of each step, a 200-seat cafeteria and even a barber shop with haircutting equipment imported from Italy.
The players lounge has Italian leather furniture, custom Playstation consoles, a pool table and a custom-made foosball table. The theater-style film room has 170 seats covered in Ferrari leather.
“I've given up trying to come up with adjectives to describe it,” Pintens said. “When the players and coaches toured the facility for the first time, they were just blown away.”
They were blown away in part because of the diligence of the interior design. With funding coming from Knight, Stegmeier was able to search around the world for the best quality in every facet of the interior design.
“One of the reasons we arrived at some of those product choices was that we combed the globe to find where the products were crafted very well,” he said. “One of the components of the design side is the craft of the products we're using. We wanted to use only products that were going to be the best and have the best technology for the spaces we needed to use them for.”
Stegmeier said he weighed the complex's need to serve its purpose properly while also having artistic value — to represent Oregon's history and color in a unique way while keeping a hard-nosed football look intact.
“It's a building that has a lot of strong armor in the black outside and reflective glass,” Stegmeier said. “But, at the same time, you see moments of color and artistic pop that becomes what the university is about. You see it in the furniture, in rugs, in the trophy case. It's really about that balance where you still can connect with the team and the history and the branding of Oregon and have a look of strength and speed.”
The other aspect of the balancing act was providing high quality infrastructure for coaches and players to perform their duties.
“What you have here is two vastly different age groups utilizing the facility,” he said. “You have men in their 50s and young men who are 19 or 20 years old. We worked to make sure the players and the coaches felt comfortable but could also have what they needed.”
Planning for the performance center began eight years ago and culminated with its opening just in time for the 2013 college football season, giving a boost to a program that is already at the top of the Division I NCAA world. The Ducks enter the season as the third ranked team in the country.
Now the question is whether they can win their first national championship and how much Hatfield-Dowlin Complex will improve the program long term, especially in recruiting.
“We'll see,” Pintens said. “We focus on the student athlete experience at the University of Oregon and that's what we feel like we have. That's what we're selling to potential recruits. It goes hand in hand, the student athlete experience and recruiting.”
Interviewed for this story: Craig Pintens, (541) 346-5814; Randy Stegmeier, (503) 863-2590