O’Rourke Hits It Out of the Park
April 26, 2022
This article was originally published in the March/April 2008 issue of DEMOLITION magazine.
It’s goodbye to baseball gloves and ball caps for a while and hello to hard hats and safety glasses as O’Rourke Wrecking Company completes the renovation of Kauffman Stadium. Upon completion of the project in 2010, Kauffman stadium will be one of the most fan-friendly venues in all of sports.
The Royals Stadium opened on April 10, 1973, and is recognized throughout baseball as one of the most beautiful ball parks with its 322’ wide water fountains and 12-story scoreboard. Many exciting games have been played here, including the 1973 All-Star Game and two World Series in 1980 and 1985. The facility was officially renamed in honor of Ewing M. Kauffman on July 2, 1993, for his success as a Royals owner. Kauffman purchased the club as an expansion franchise in 1968 and was also the founder of Marion Laboratories.
O’Rourke Wrecking Company completed the selective demolition of the Kansas City Royals Kauffman Stadium in November. This complicated project, as with all professional sports stadiums, was required to be completed at an accelerated pace.
Given the amount of work that had to be completed between baseball seasons, and the 20 calendar days allotted for demolition operations, this project required working 12 hour+ days, seven days a week to complete the aggressive schedule.
Due to O’Rourke’s expertise in sports venues, they were invited by the Construction Manager, Hunt/Walton, to bid on the demolition phase. O’Rourke quickly stepped up to the plate with their bid going in on a Tuesday and were mobilized to the site by the following Monday.
Given the expedited schedule, O’Rourke divided this large project into five separate projects. These projects were each manned with a superintendent, work crew, and its own equipment. The project areas were: demolition of the two exterior Helix ramps; demolition and excavation of the left and right field bullpens; demolition and excavation of the lower bowl vomitories; demolition of the free-standing scoreboard and Jumbo Tron video board; and demolition of the Little K Ballpark and various site demolition.
Kauffman Stadium’s schedule was typical of other professional sports venues that O’Rourke completed, such as the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Park, Ohio State Buckeye’s Stadium and the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium, in that the demolition had to commence the day after the season ended. Upon conclusion of the Royals’ baseball season, O’Rourke began relocating merchandise and facility equipment that would clear the pathway to allow for demolition operations.
Demolition of the Little K Ballpark and Various Salvage Items
Demolition required daily coordination between all contractors involved to ensure the ongoing Royals’ operations were never disrupted. The first step in the demolition process was to salvage existing items to protect and preserve the old Kauffman Stadium. These included stadium seats, signage and the outfield wall.
The most important salvage item was the Golden Crown on top of the scoreboard measuring 15’ x 20’ x 50’ high and 120’ in the air.
This salvage operation was no easy task. It involved high, intricate rigging and deconstruction to ensure the infamous Crown was not damaged during the removal. True to its reputation the Great Plains did not disappoint as daily high winds exceeded 40 mph, forcing the entire crane operation to be shut down. The high winds encountered made it all the more challenging to hoist the large sheet metal pieces and control them with the remaining outfield light stanchions still in place. This removal definitely qualified as “Threading the Needle.” Maneuvering a 40’ piece of structure through a 50’ opening with a 300 ton crane 120’ in the air definitely made for some challenging work.
Demolition of the Free-Standing Scoreboard and Jumbo Tron
The Crown scoreboard, which had been such a fixture at Kauffman Stadium, was the most critical path item that had to be completed. The new and larger scoreboard was going to be constructed within the same footprint. Standing 12 stories high behind centerfield, O’Rourke crews took down the scoreboard piece by piece, thus leaving a temporary hole in the field’s backdrop. O’Rourke was pleased to be able to dismantle this behemoth icon in only 10 days, which was half the time allotted for this demolition. The old pieces of scoreboard are scheduled to be displayed in the Royals’ new Hall of Fame, which is scheduled to open in 2009.
Demolition and Excavation of the Lower Bowl Vomitories
The interior vomitory removal posed a debris removal challenge. Due to the tight access corridors, the largest pieces of equipment accessible to these work areas were mini-excavators and skid steer loaders. Due to their limited size, the heavily reinforced three-foot thick concrete walls were difficult to demolish.
Once the demolition was complete, O’Rourke had to come up with a logistics plan of loading and transporting over 120 semi-deump trailer loads of dirt and debris from the interior of the stadium to the exterior of the stadium for removal off-site. This difficult debris management required a convoy of skid steers and dump buggies to complete over 1000 trips per day, shall we say “one teaspoon at a time.”
Just when O’Rourke literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel with the first base vomitory removal nearly completed, they moved over to the third based side to repeat this difficult demolition process. As with all projects, the repetition of removing the mirror image again allowed for a decreased duration.
O’Rourke was able to remove the third base concrete vomitory three days faster than the one on the first base side.
Demolition and Excavation of the Left and Right Field Bullpens
In contrast to the vomitory demolition, the outfield bullpens reconfiguration allowed for heavy equipment to be utilized. Large areas of the outfield seating, including the concrete treads and risers, were removed from the 45-degree slope. This seat removal was in conjunction with the enlargement of the existing bullpens, which were located at the field elevation over 40’ below the exterior access to the stadium.
This demolition work required excavation and relocation of over 10,000 cubic yards of dirt to allow for the new and enlarged bullpens. The extreme elevation change posed the same daunting task as the vomitory removal, but with 100,000 lb. excavators instead of 1,800 lb. excavators.
The excavators essentially performed a bucket brigade-type line to remove the spoils from the lowest elevation (playing field) to the exterior of the stadium. Given the large amount of demolition and material removal needed in such a short amount of time, the demolition of the right and left-field bullpens were performed independently of one another.
Demolition of the Two Exterior Helix Ramps
The last remaining large work area was the Helix ramps. These ramps were commonplace with a large number of sports stadiums that were built in the 1970s.
Removal of these Helixes required particular caution because they were tied into the existing stadium and were only a few feet from the existing escalators that were to remain. When the Helixes were separated from the existing stadium, a cantilever condition of over 20’ was created. Shoring this ramp slab 80’ in the air was not practical given the short time frame, so the slabs were supported with a crane and then demolished in small pieces via a mini-excavator.
Once the ramps were severed and isolated from the remaining stadium, a crane and wrecking ball were utilized to remove the remainder of the ramps.
To compensate for the missing Helixes, a pair of staircases will flank each side of the stadium, and additional elevators will be installed. Fans will now have four separate ways to reach Kauffman’s upper deck level: elevators, stairs, the two remaining Helixes and the escalators. The changes are intended to ease the flow to and from the different levels of the stadium.
Debris Logistics
Given the large site and various concurrent operations ongoing throughout the site, O’Rourke designated a check-in point for the various trucks removing solid waste, C&D debris, solid clean fill, and dirt materials from the site. This allowed the on-site dispatcher to stay in constant communication with the various work areas, ensuring trucks were utilized as efficiently as possible without unnecessary idle time.
Over 200 loads a day were removed from this large area that had rigid site restrictions. O’Rourke found that this critical step ensured a continuous work operation and helped attain the overall project success.
O’Rourke Wrecking Company is proud of its employees who, once again, overcame weather, difficult working conditions, long hours, and 40 consecutive 12+ hour days to complete this exciting project. With their long-tenured workforce, O’Rourke is consistently able to complete all types of extremely complex, fast-track and large-scale demolition projects.
