On any given weekend venues like Budweiser Gardens can go from hockey rinks to basketball courts to concert venues and back again. It seems like magic, but it’s not. It’s a lot of moving parts and people moving together.
The Director of Operations of Budweiser Gardens, Gary Turrell, calls it controlled chaos.
He says planning an event depends on the scale of it.
“If you’re looking at the Junos or the country music award shows; we’re talking with those guys a year in advance. We start having meetings and we’ll slowly ramp up those meetings as we get a little bit closer…”
Not only does the operations crew deal with the physical transformation of the arena, they also deal with seating, staging, and security.
When it comes to the sports at Bud Gardens, Turrell says it’s very familiar.
“We’ve done an awful lot of hockey games, an awful lot of basketball so we know that schedule mid-summer, so to speak. We’ve already got it written down in the calendar. We know what to expect.”
Budweiser Gardens is the home to both the London Knights hockey team and the London Lightning basketball team, with the two seasons overlapping there’s a lot of changeover between hockey rink and basketball court.
The Knights play most of their games on Friday nights, with 23 of those Friday games taking place at Bud Gardens. When the Lightning are playing too, it’s not unusual to see them play at home on Saturday, and another Knights game on Sunday.
Operations Manager, Robert Burry, says depending on the type of event it only takes hours to transform the Gardens.
“If it’s a theatre show, where it’s only a quarter of the bowl it’s usually about 4 hours. If it’s a full west end, full bowl, big show it’s usually about 6-8. And it takes us anywhere between 3-5 to set up for basketball.”
He adds that depending on which type of event it is the crew fluctuates between 15-25 people.
Burry says no matter the event, when it’s hockey season, the London Knights ice is always present.
“We never drain the rink. Only once a year, in the summertime, when the London Knights are finished. That’s when the ice comes out.”
Grave Digger.
Photo courtesy of KAZ Vorpal.
Even for events like Monster Jam.
Thousands of tonnes of dirt, monster trucks, buses, and cars all sit on top of the London Knights ice.
“For Monster Jam, we would then lay our event decking. And then we lay a 20mL vapour barrier plastic over the event decking. And then we also add 500 sheets of plywood on top of that, so that it’s extra safe. There’s no dirt getting on that ice.”
Turrell says the London Knights and Budweiser Gardens have a special, mutually beneficial relationship. The ice they play on is the most important aspect of any changeover.
Event decking at Budweiser Gardens.
Photo courtesy of Tamara Thornton
To protect and insulate that ice, a special event decking is used for every event.
“[The event decking] is a product from space age technologies and that’s called Ice Pro. It’s basically, a waffled, recycled plastic that’s about an inch thick that covers the ice.”
544 sheets, some of which are specially cut to fit the corners of the rink are laid down beneath any flooring.
Moving as a well-oiled machine is necessary to getting everything done quickly and smoothly, but Turrell says he tries to plan for every eventuality.
“We’re generally prepared for the worst-case scenario. We expect that something may go wrong during every changeover.”
He adds that they have extras of everything; from glass to boards to the specially cut pieces of decking. And if something were to go wrong, the public would never know.
“No matter what happens [back here] the show’s going on.”
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