Indoor sports centers can serve as a showpiece for a community – offering a place to play, practice and gather year-round, and generating a consistent revenue stream for the building owner.
But it’s not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” Choosing the right sports complex is the critical difference between a popular place to play and an abandoned gym.
Think of a sports center as a place to build community. Athletes who feel welcome and comfortable will likely return for games, practices, tournaments, and events and recommend your facility to others.
The bottom line is that you can’t have a premier sports complex without having an optimized building. With the options available today, people will not return to an inadequate sports center.
Before designing and building a sports center, consider the building you want and need. The experts at Legacy Building Solutions are here to guide you through all phases of your sports facility planning and design.
Sports Complex Design Considerations
Buildings can be customized for a wide variety of practical and aesthetic reasons. At the very least, a sports center should include:
Adequate space and clearance. The governing bodies of most sports have set requirements for the length and width of the playing surface. Your building needs to accommodate those measurements, plus room for pedestrians and anyone else.
Clearspan area is extremely important for sports centers, as support posts will obstruct the game. Legacy’s fabric buildings on a rigid steel frame have the strength and durability to support widths of 300 or more feet without interior columns.
Overhead clearance is another consideration, especially when balls or equipment fly around. This may mean a non-traditional building shape, such as a lean-to or gambrel roof.
Indoor Sports Complex Features
Of course, the best sports centers are more than just a playing surfaces. Help people choose your center by adding areas for onlookers, pro shops, changing rooms, trainers, offices, weight rooms, and walking tracks to keep people coming back.
Insulation, climate control and ventilation. The interior climate is a primary consideration of sports complex architecture. Indoor sports buildings must maintain a comfortable temperature for year-round use.
Insulation combined with a climate control system keeps the building at the perfect temperature, no matter the outside conditions. Legacy’s insulated sports buildings contain a puncture-resistant fabric liner to protect the insulation and provide a polished interior.
Active or passive ventilation allows the building to breathe and can also be a source of fresh air inside the building. Large fans, eave-height air intake, and other systems keep air circulating.
Adequate lighting. A bright, clean-looking sports center will be more popular than a dark, shadowy one. Proper lighting makes it possible to see clearly throughout the building rather than developing bad habits caused by dark areas.
Fabric buildings are well known for having abundant natural light throughout. In an insulated building, the fabric liner covers the insulation and creates a bright interior. White fabric works to reflect the lighting system, creating a bright, glare-free surface.
Code-compliance. Public-use buildings such as sports centers must meet high-occupancy codes, which often mean safety features, sprinklers and fire suppression, and specially equipped doors. Sturdy rigid frame technology allows all these systems to be added to the building design and the other accessories you need and want.
Advanced Design Options for Indoor Sports Centers
A sports center needs more than the bare minimum to attract and retain players. Other options should be part of your sports complex design space requirements. Legacy Building Solutions offers these custom features, which are popular for sports applications.
Superior acoustics. The soft fabric works to muffle distracting sounds happening elsewhere in the building. You’ll be left with the game's sounds, increasing focus and concentration.
Soft walls. You’re likely to hit the wall occasionally when you're going all out. Fabric walls naturally have the padding and give necessary to minimize injuries and keep athletes healthy on all wall surfaces. See a case study of a multi-sport building with soft walls.
Custom colors and design. Showcase your team pride with a building exterior that features your team colors and logo. Add your mascot or icon anywhere inside or outside the building with a permanently welded banner.
Complement existing buildings. If your campus includes other structures on site with brick, steel, or glazing walls, your Legacy building can also feature those materials. This helps the building blend in and create a cohesive look throughout the facility.
The rigid frame design also allows eaves and overhangs on Legacy buildings. Overhangs provide a dry area around the building, protect your landscaping, and give the buildings a traditional A-frame shape - as seen in this indoor tennis center.
A new fabric building can also expand an existing sports complex. Legacy crews will attach the new structure to an existing building using a sealed flap, vestibule, or corridor.
Add more room with a raised mezzanine. Mezzanines can be used as press boxes, dining areas, storage, additional seating, or pro shops. Keeping these additions off the floor keeps them accessible without compromising your playing surface.
Consultative service. Legacy will work with you to design the best indoor sports complex plan, no matter where you are in your project's planning and construction phases. Our team of industry experts will make recommendations that may help cut costs or improve the quality of your structure.
We provide engineered drawings before construction starts to show your stakeholders the possibilities. The factory-trained installation crew handles material unloading, building erection, and site clean-up, so you have more time to focus on the game and programming.
An indoor sports center is an important investment. Before you buy, consider how you will use the facility. Then choose a builder with experience in sports facility planning and design to optimize the experience for your team and community.