The view from a VIP chalet at the expanded Fair Hill equestrian venue in Maryland, shown in a Populous rendering.
Two major equestrian venues in two states are being re-created by Populous, and both locations will attract horse shows from across the globe.
The Fair Hill equestrian venue in Maryland will undergo a complete redesign that will make it a five-star venue under regulations of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, the sports’ governing body known by its French acronym, FEI. That will allow the venue to host international federation events at the highest level and put it among only seven such facilities worldwide.
The Oklahoma Fair Park venue will be built from the ground up and was designed to have a mix of fixed and retractable seats. The venue will have an upper-level open concourse where food, beverage and sponsorship spaces will be built at the top of the arena bowl rather than under the stands.
Populous’ director of equestrian services, Todd Gralla, has had an understanding of what equestrian facilities need from long before he went into design: He grew up showing horses. Today he and his wife have a horse farm in Oklahoma and show horses at Oklahoma Fair Park.
“Coming from a show background, I was interested in the betterment of venues,” he said. “Most of the venues when I was a kid were not specifically designed for equestrian use.”
Gralla’s father was an architect, so architecture was a natural fit for him. For the past 22 years, Gralla has been in charge of master planning and design for more than 200 equestrian facilities and fairgrounds across the world.
“His equestrian knowledge has been very valuable to us,” said Tim O’Toole, general manager of the Oklahoma State Fair.
The Oklahoma State Fairgrounds has received many facelifts to its facilities over the last 15 years, and building a new venue to replace 43-year-old Jim Norick Arena is the last of many upgrades, O’Toole said.
“We’re very excited about it. It’s just the culmination of the work that we started in 2005 to transform this whole facility into a 21st-century tourism destination,” he said.
The new venue will cost roughly $98 million and is being funded by a hotel and motel tax approved by voters years ago. Officials are nailing down a date to break ground and hope it will be sometime mid-2019.
The fairgrounds sit on 430 acres, and Jim Norick Arena will remain open as the new coliseum is being built. Populous was hired five years ago to do a thorough analysis of where the new coliseum should be constructed on the fairgrounds, O’Toole said.
Gralla designed the venue to have an upper-level concourse that can be configured for retractable seating underneath, allowing the coliseum to go from 4,000 seats to 11,000 for various events, including high school sports, Disney on Ice, concerts and rodeos. The event floor will be 140 feet by 270 feet.
Gralla wanted to design something that hadn’t been done before, and he came up with the idea to have an open concourse so that guests could see the show no matter where they are in the venue.
“All the food service, all of the spectator services are within the seating bowl, not underneath,” Gralla said. “All of the services will be in view of the field of play. You don’t sell as much food and beverage when you have to leave a bowl. You don’t ever have to leave the action to go to the bathroom or get a hot dog.”
Additionally, sponsorship space is also located on the open concourse and upper deck, and a freight elevator will allow John Deere and Ford, for example, to haul their tractors up to be displayed.
In Maryland, the Fair Hill venue sits on 400 acres of the 5,600-acre Fair Hill Natural Resource Management Area in Elkton. The need for a redesign came after the FEI awarded the venue a top-level event for 2020.
The renovations at Fair Hill will allow it to play host to top international equestrian events. (Populous)
Populous won the bid with Fair Hill to redesign its facilities to meet the new five-star standard. In doing so, Gralla and his design team had to figure out a way to expand seating without making it permanent. The first phase of the project costs $21 million and is being funded with private and public money.
The final design allows the 12,000-seat venue to add seating with overlay scaffolding. They also designed the equestrian area to host up to 80,000 guests over the course of the FEI Three Day Event, the organization’s top level of competition.
“About 60 percent of the venue every year will be temporarily built,” Gralla said. “We just don’t need that much permanent facility on a yearly basis.”
The venue is outdoors, so it also will have a rain canopy. The grandstands will become premium seating. Four arenas will be included in the main stadium, one for competitions and three smaller practice areas.
The main VIP stands will be permanent and will seat 1,200 with table service. A media tower will be added and the remainder of the stadium will be overlay, giving the venue an opportunity to sell various hospitality packages.
That means venue officials can build the overlay depending on how many tickets are sold.
“Temporary structures give us flexibility to change year to year,” Gralla said. “The nice thing about events and overlay is that we’re selling tickets months and years in advance.We’ll build what people are buying.”
Gralla’s design approach was attractive to the Maryland Sports Commission, which manages Fair Hill, said Terry Hasseltine, executive director of the commission.
“It’s going to change our identity,” Hasseltine said. “People are going to start putting Fair Hill on their bucket list in the equestrian industry.”