Figuring out how to demolish Tropicana Field

By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
In print: Saturday, March 15, 2008

More than a million feet of steel cable went into the construction of the unique system that supports the dome at Tropicana Field. If the stadium is razed, all that steel might end up in China.
	[Times (1998)]

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ST. PETERSBURG

The first time Bill Rose drove by the dome, he thought the roof had caved. He didn't know Tropicana Field's tilted lid was designed that way, 22 years ago, when it was proclaimed "the Ballpark of the 21st Century."

Rose represents the D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. He has a machine in Plant City that looks like a dinosaur jaw and can divide a BMW convertible in two bites. Three years ago, his outfit blasted the roof off St. Petersburg's Bayfront Arena and reduced Clearwater's Adam's Mark Hotel to a mountainous heap in 15 seconds.

The Rays hope the city does away with the Trop and builds a new ballpark. In fact, if the Rays have their way, the Trop could end up on a slow boat to China. Literally.

It has not been the easiest sell.

In just 22 years, the Trop has cost about $230-million to build and continually update. The new Rays project would cost a billion dollars (that's a b in front of illion).

But the Rays have one powerful intangible on their side — the possibility that thousands of citizens (many of them NASCAR fans) would vote for it just to see something a million square feet and 225 feet high fall.

Rose expects every wrecking company in the country to bid for the job. Every time he drives by, all he can think about is blowing that cockeyed roof right off.

"Of course," he says, "I feel that way about every roof."

• • •

What an architectural feat the Trop was in its day. The project had unique ambitions. It called for an impossible roof: one that was 9 acres and 1,300 tons that could cover those million square feet below while withstanding hurricanes — and without posts planted in the base path.

Until then, architects used air cushions to support big domes. An air-cushioned sports dome in Detroit went psssssssttt after a snowfall.

Along came a visionary named David Geiger, a New York engineer who preached a mystic, Zen-like principle of physics: The harmony of opposites. The peaceful balance of push and pull.

Tensegrity.

Geiger imagined a maze of concentric rings and steel cables suspended hundreds of feet above a simple patch of cloth called second base. It would be a man-made state of bliss — massive elements pushing and pulling, always yielding, never breaking.

The design was outrageous, never done on such a scale. It called for a million feet of steel cable, enough to extend from St. Petersburg to Disney World and back.

Alas, no statue of engineer Geiger today graces the Tropicana Field lobby. Near completion of his masterpiece, the roof fell in on his reputation. In 1988, state officials accused him of negligence and conflict of interest, and he had to surrender his engineering license.

He went off to engineer a smaller dome based on those same principles of tensegrity for the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul.

The Seoul dome became the first of its kind. The St. Pete dome became the biggest.

Geiger never returned to see it. He died of a heart attack in Korea.

• • •

Rick deFlon devoted 15 years of his life to the Ballpark of the 21st Century. He was the architect on the project for the big stadium-maker, HOK Sports of Kansas City.

The designer notes that architectural feats once stood hundreds of years; now they barely make it past 20. "Sports stadiums," he says by phone from Kansas City, "are like Bic pens."

But just let them try to demolish the steely-webbed Trop, its strength so soundly, boldly underwritten by the principles of tensegrity. Each bundle of cables carries a million pounds of tension. The center ring alone weighs 60,000 pounds.

"Not so easy,'' deFlon says. ''Tell them to be really careful."

Wrecker Rose yawns. "Architects always say that," he says. "I always tell them, 'You can't build anything we can't tear up.' "

Rose worships at a different altar of physics:

Gravity.

• • •

Basically, all it would likely take to bring down the Trop is some charges rigged to the concentric rings.

The little blasts wouldn't even be visible from the outside. From the VIP viewing grandstands, you'd see a shudder, then the whole roof, cable and all, collapsing inward, turning the great Trop into a bowl of steel spaghetti.

"Nothing special about it," Rose says.

"It's mostly air anyway."

• • •

Down in Miami, fans have flocked to auctions during an ongoing demolition of the 70-year-old Orange Bowl, former home to the Miami Dolphins, the University of Miami Hurricanes and five Super Bowls.

The fans have stood in line to buy locker-room urinals. One has been reincarnated as a beer dispenser. (Pull the flush handle and out comes beer.)

So it's probable that Carl Crawford's urinal, the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame, and the mascot cownose rays swimming behind centerfield would be rescued before the Trop is pulverized and recycled.

The concrete would be smashed and hauled away, and would later turn up in public works projects.

The cable spaghetti and concentric rings would be sliced into 3-foot pieces by 100,000-ton shearing machines with 31-inch jaws.

All that steel — the force behind Geiger's masterpiece of tensegrity — would likely be loaded on barges.

Probable destination: China.

• • •

"I lived that project for 15 years," says architect deFlon. "I'm really sad."

HOK, the stadium-building company he worked for, is taking it better. It designed the old one. But it has also designed the new one that the Rays hope to see built on the city's waterfront.

It's really something. It has a roof made of fabric sails, held aloft by a maze of steel cables. It's the first of its kind.

HOK calls it "the Stadium of the 21st Century."

John Barry can be reached at jbarry@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2258.