Arrowhead Stadium: Upper Seating Bowl Waterproofing Repairs


Arrowhead Stadium originally opened in 1972 and is known to be the home to the Super Bowl Champions Kansas City Chiefs. Renovations of the stadium completed in 2010 included adding luxury suites on the club level of the stadium. This meant that the upper seating bowl not only had to seat more than 34,000 Chief fans but also act as a "roof" for the new luxury suites. The upper seating bowl comprises L-shaped precast concrete seating risers spanning from cast-in-place concrete raker beams and is divided by sixteen expansion joints. In 2018, the planning for the upper seating bowl waterproofing program began. The goal for the repair project was to implement waterproofing upgrades to protect the concrete for the next 10 years. To add to the challenge of a large-scale waterproofing and structural repair project, the construction efforts had to include coordination with simultaneous seat replacement to be completed in a single off-season. The project included approximately 280,000 square feet of traffic coating, 15 miles of joint sealant installation and replacement, along with a wide variety of concrete repair details for distressed conditions, typical for a structure of this service life.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Understand the history of the stadium and background for the project.
  2. Understand the large-scale assessment process.
  3. Learn the repair design methodology utilizing redundancy.
  4. Learn the construction administration with short project schedule.