It's that time of year that some consider a holiday after the holidays! Many people make chili, attend parties and don the jerseys of their favorite football teams. Yes, it's the Super Bowl. This year, Superbowl LVIII will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday, February 11. So, even if you are not a fan of this year's teams (the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers), don't care for football (how couldn't you?) or just tune in to watch the commercials, there's more to see this year because CS has already made a few touchdowns in the stadium's design.

More about Allegiant Stadium
Allegiant Stadium opened its doors in 2020. It is the new home of the NFL team, the Raiders, who moved there from Oakland, California. This 65,000-seat facility, which includes a retractable natural turf field for the NFL, an artificial turf playing field for the University of Nevada Las Vegas, walls that open to views of the Las Vegas Strip and a translucent cable truss roof, also sports a few CS products!

How did CS learn about the project?
Initially, the Oakland Raiders' move to Las Vegas was all over the news. The team was looking for a place that could house a larger stadium and decided on Las Vegas. CS got involved during the bidding stage thanks to CS rep Albert Smith of Integrated Marketing Concepts, who knew that Manica Architecture, the architect, was in his Southern Nevada territory. Plus, the job went to Enclos, a great customer of CS. Says Albert, "Because of our past history working with Enclos, they knew we could do the job. They were confident in CS. And our pricing was good."

Which CS products are part of Allegiant Stadium?

• Our extreme-weather RSH-5700 louvers.
• Stainless steel corner guards.
• Acrovyn®, which can be found in the Raiders' locker room, back-of-house areas and a private lounge. (If they broadcast from those areas, you may get a glimpse.)
• Plus, Acrovyn by Design® may be included in future renovations.

Were there any special design considerations?
There were many design challenges to solve. The engineering team needed to consider the shape of the building, its radius and the slope of the glass. There were logistical concerns around this because the team wasn't installing the expansion joints up a flat wall.

How did we solve the problems?

Expansion Joints:
There were many locations in the design where the expansion joint was supposed to be installed into the interior side of the curtainwall. Yet, many of those locations were inaccessible to the installation team.

To work around these issues, we created a new extrusion that allowed the installer to attach both the internal and external gaskets into the same extrusion from the exterior side of the building. This was possible because we used a new frame and gasket system with our standard model expansion joint.  

Louvers: 
According to Albert Smith, there's a saying that Vegas has "360 days of sunshine and 450 days of wind." Because wind-driven rain can be a problem, our extreme weather louvers were the solution for that environment.

For the curtainwall, we needed to carefully fabricate a louver that was narrower at the bottom than at the top to account for the building's flared design. We even painted the louvers in their custom "Raiders Black" paint, which also works for Allegiant's nickname, The Death Star. Pro tip: Even though you can't see our louvers, just know they are behind the black and white banding.

It took immense coordination.
According to Arup, "From concept design to completion in only 40 months, Allegiant Stadium is the fastest designed and constructed US football stadium of its size." As with any large project, it took immense coordination, hard work and logistic geniuses to ensure on-time delivery and meet tight deadlines. But they did it!

So, even if the big game ends up being not all that you thought it was, you can still celebrate that CS has scored some touchdowns there already. And if you're lucky enough to be there in person, maybe you'll have a first-hand glance at some CS products! Tag us on social media for a chance to be featured on our channels and enjoy the game!