THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 20, 1996 TAG: 9604200337
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
The concrete has set and the paint is drying. The seats are bolted in place under a canopy that looks like the remnant of an aircraft hangar. There are trees and grass where once there was only mud. There are seven lakes, nine acres of parking and, most importantly of all, the tickets are on sale.
Thirteen months after the city and Cellar Door of Virginia inked a deal to build a $17.5 million amphitheater on a water-soaked field next to Princess Anne Park, the pace of construction has reached a fever pitch.
Workers of every trade - from painters and carpenters to electricians and masons - continued work Friday on the thousands of last-minute details that will result in a concert venue like no other in Hampton Roads.
But it has not been an easy job and much remains undone.
Ask Michael L. Daniels, project manager for general contractor W.M. Jordan Co., how the work's coming along and the first thing out of his mouth is laughter. It's the kind of response that anyone who has managed a complex construction projection on a tight deadline would appreciate - especially when considering that more than 30 days of building time has been lost to rain and snow.
``This is going real well,'' Daniels says after the laughing stops. ``The subcontractors and the city are all working well together and pitching in to do their part.
``We've lost a lot of time to rain, and to make up for it we're working seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day,'' he said. ``On the average Sunday, we have about 60 people on site.''
Less than a month remains before the May 15 opening concert by Peninsula native and local favorite Bruce Hornsby, and come rain or shine, the Virginia Beach Amphitheater will open for business, planners said.
On Thursday, workers began laying 4-foot by 50-foot sections of sod on the main lawn that stretches across a 60-foot high, man-made hill. Dozens of trees and bushes have already been planted and asphalt for main roads was being laid all week.
``All buildings are up and are getting final coats of paint,'' Daniels said. ``We have electrical power to all of them and on Friday we began putting in the final water connections. The administration building has been done for a month.
``We just need the weather to cooperate for a while,'' he added. ``The last two weeks have been great. I'm no expert on these places, but I think this is going to be a beautiful place.''
One reason is the trees. When the city acquired the property known as Lake Ridge, the deal included an old nursery site that had a large number of trees intended for transplant. Some of them were quite mature, by nursery standards, and have now been transplanted to the amphitheater site. Instead of settling for spindly saplings, the park will be filled with fairly mature live oaks, willows and other native varieties.
``For a site that had no landscaping and was really just a big muddy field and to have such mature landscaping right from the start is a pretty rare opportunity,'' said Jeff M. Griffin, whose company, Griffin Associates of Alexandria, is the project's development manager.
Water has been a consistent theme for the amphitheater, from its logo, which includes a stylized wave, to the rain that has plagued the project. But it was the water in the ground itself that first caught the attention of planners, who used some novel techniques to deal with it.
Burrell F. Saunders, an architect whose Virginia Beach firm CMSS Architects designed the amphitheater, said they had to remove a certain amount of ground water before building the 60-foot berm.
To do that, they used a system of ``wicks'' that are designed to absorb water and hold it in place. Workers laid 113 miles of them. Then, when the berm was built the weight of it acted like a boat's hull and displaced the water from the site while also minimizing the chance that the berm would later settle, he said.
When the show opens on May 15, there will hardly be a bad seat in the house. One reason is the five oversized video screens being installed by Onyx Engineering Inc. of Virginia Beach.
Bob Turner, the company's general manager, and Thomas Beaudry, its president, said there will be three 10-foot by 14-foot screens for people with lawn seats and two smaller 12-foot by 9-foot screens, for people under the roof.
The screens will be powered by the latest technology in open-air projection systems and will give a resolution that from the lawn or under the roof will come very close, if not mimic, a television set, he said.
During concerts, a camera operator will have access to the stage allowing the crowd a direct view of the show. But what makes the projection system unique, they said, is its sound and video delay system.
When the amphitheater was planned, engineers realized quickly that people in the back of the area would not hear the sound as quickly as the people up front. If sound were the only consideration, this would not be too much of a problem, but they had plans for video as well.
The problem was that as musicians played and were recorded by cameras, the electronic signal showing them singing or drumming would be instantaneous while the sound would lag behind as it traveled from the stage to a person's ears. The effect would be like that of a movie that was not in sync.
To solve the problem, Onyx Engineering has adopted technology that delays the sound signal by only a moment so what when someone sitting in the back sees a drummer hit a symbol on the screen the sound reaches the listeners' ears at the same time. MEMO: The price of admission/Page E1
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Countdown to completion
STEVE EARLEY
The Virginian-Pilot
Mark Chamberlain works on the Amphitheater's roof. The $17.5 million
venue is due to open May 15, with Bruce Hornsby's concert.
VIRGINIA BEACH AMPHITHEATER
Countdown: 25 days until opening
BEACH AMPHITHEATER
Map
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