Tommy Frishkorn of American Floor Sanding in Albany, Oregon checks the spacing of pieces of flooring at the Northwest Sports Hub building in Centralia on Monday morning.
Slowly but surely, the Northwest Sports Hub building is coming along — and workers have begun installing one of the central pieces to the 76,500-square-foot building’s infrastructure.
Contractors began installing the 23,000-square-foot hardwood floor on the north end of the building last week and hope to have it finished in a month’s time. On Monday, contractors spent their time installing a sub-flooring system, complete with spacers that will be used as a sort of shock-absorbing system. Over the next few weeks, they’ll install the top layers of floor that will be used for sports courts.
“It’s a maple floor that will go on top of a sprung floor system,” said Terry Brandsen, project consultant with Brandsen Hardwood Floors in Milwaukie, Oregon. “We’ll be installing the floor through Friday, and after that we’ve still got to sand it and seal it.”
Brandsen is the contractor for this portion of the project, with American Floor Sanding of Albany, Oregon, subcontracting. The cost of the entire flooring project is about $175,000.
The floor system is known as the Bio-Cushion system from Robbins Sports Surfaces. The system uses several layers of sub-flooring and padding, eventually building up to the maple floor complete with a finish and painted lines and stripes for a variety of sports.
Subcontractor Matt Mower and two of his crew members spent their Monday installing the first layer of sub-flooring, stapling shock absorbers to the bottom portions of panels and installing the sheathing in an already recessed area of the building’s foundation.
They’ll be in town for a bit longer, Mower said.
“It’s one of our biggest jobs we’ve done,” Mower said. “We just did a gym in Beaverton that was about 7,600 square feet and that took us two days. This is going to be a lot bigger than that.”
The 23,000-square-foot flooring will be permanent, allowing the half of the complex comprising the floor to host several basketball games at once. Other sports such as volleyball can also utilize it.
Other sports such as softball will also utilize the Northwest Sports Hub building. Thanks to the configuration of the floor and the facility, anyone can easily roll out artificial turf over the floor and remove it once done for a quick setup.
Mower says he’s happy to be one person out of many who are helping make a vision of a multiuse sports facility in Centralia a reality before long.
“It’s a great facility. I’m impressed,” Mower said. “It’s one of the best ones I’ve ever worked in.”
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Christopher Brewer: (360) 807-8235
