Tuesday, August 15, 2000
Stadium shows sign of opening
By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sure signs that construction of Paul Brown Stadium is almost complete: restroom signs, luxury suite signs, gate signs, section signs, elevator signs, stairwell signs.
They're sprinkled all over the stadium. Big signs, little signs, medium-size signs. Indoor signs and outdoor signs. Flashy signs that make you look. Mundane signs that don't.
Mark Peters, an Adex International carpenter, installs an electronic message board in front of a concession stand at Paul Brown Stadium.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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“One of the very last things to happen in a (new) building is the signage,” said Charleen Catt Lyon, president of Clifton-based Catt Lyon Design, which designed virtually every sign in and around the massive bowl, aside from the scoreboards.
For the first two years of the project, finished signs were nowhere to be seen. A virtual village of workers was busy building 1.85 million square feet of enclosed space (equivalent to 32 football fields).
They came. They sawed. They hammered.
Then a few months ago, signs began springing up, a signal that the project would eventually wind down. About 1,000 electricians, plumbers, painters, carpet layers, specialty electronics workers and others now are making a final push before the Bengals' first home exhibition game on Saturday.
“All the finishes have to be completed before (workers) can hang the signs. So this has been a grand coordination to try to be following right behind all the painters and plasterers and whoever,” Ms. Lyon said.
With 2,962 signs situated around the stadium, this is her company's biggest project to date. The original signage budget was $1.5 million, but the final cost is $1 million, Ms. Lyon says.
Lately, she has been walking the $453 million stadium, making sure the signs make sense.
The biggest signs, or pylons, direct fans who are outside the stadium to the proper gates. Those signs are 24 feet tall. The smallest signs are 3-by-6 inches, and are posted beside every door that is accessible from a publicly traveled hallway. There are 731 of those.
Catt Lyon Design also created nontraditional signage, such as mesh banners with images of past Bengal greats. Those are being hung in concourses.
And the company designed themed graphics panels for concession areas. The graphics also feature former Bengals players, and employ enlarged photographic images that give the impression of motion.
A crew from Woodlawn-based Adex International was installing the last of the concession graphics late last week.
“Everybody's driving hard. But it seems like spirits are staying high,” said 34-year-old lead car penter Mark Peters, who is from Fairfield Township, near Hamilton.
He was being assisted by 19-year-old Mark Reichert, a student on summer break from Eastern Kentucky University. Mr. Reichert had worked 65 hours the previous week.
“I've got to go back to school to get a break,” he joked.
This is his first construction job. “It's kind of cool that 30 years down the road I'll see (the stadium) and say, "Yeah, I worked on that.'”
The sign installers, like many of the other workers, feel good about their role in building a new Cincinnati landmark.
“What we're doing is not unique, we're just putting signs up,” said Don Zehnder, Adex's project manager. And yet, “even though we've got a small part, we did something here, which is really neat.”
Mr. Peters hopes to return to the stadium someday with his family. He's married, with a 2-year-old daughter and another child on the way. He'll proudly show them the graphics he installed over concession stands.
Ms. Lyon also will be back for games. But she might not pay much attention to the playing field.
“Probably for the first season,” she said, “I'll be watching how people get to their seats.”
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