MCU Park (formerly Keyspan Park), Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY
New York
Date: 2000, 2001
Minor League Park Gets Big-League Stadium Expansion Joints
Stadium expansion joints seldom grab headlines. Instead, “The Boys Of Summer Return To Brooklyn,” heralded USA Today on the first opening day in Brooklyn in 44 years when the “Cyclones” took to the field of their new ballpark.
The team was named for a Coney Island rollercoaster and while the views from the stadium are spectacular, designers made sure that the stadium expansion joints presented no hair-raising surprises.
EMSEAL’s approach to stadium joint sealing provides a single source for expansion joints featuring technologies best suited to the many joint applications in a sports facility.
MCU Park features technologies from a range of options to suit joint conditions while ensuring continuity of seal in changes in plane and direction as well as between technologies.
Starting in the exterior walls of the superstructure, structural expansion joints are sealed with Seismic Colorseal. This products unique, non-invasive anchoring ensures the substrates are not violated with screws and anchors. In addition, Seismic Colorseal can be transitioned around, through, over and under building elements to ensure continuity of seal and thermal insulation.
Where the joints in the exterior transition over and down parapets to meet the tread-and-riser joints of the bowl, watertightness is critical.
Blockouts required for EMSEAL’s Thermaflex system in the bowl are continued 8-inches (200mm) up the inside of the parapet wall. This allows the Seismic Colorseal to be married into the Thermaflex to ensure continuity of seal.
Made to field-measurements provided by the installing contractor, each inside and outside corner as tread to riser transitions is factory-welded in EMSEAL’s plant.
Each join is welded throughout the extrusion’s cross-section to ensure that the primary and secondary seals inherent in the system are watertight.
As a further quality measure, each weld is wrapped with a fully-welded reinforcing sheet that is blended into the main seal for aesthetics.
At the concourse walkways and concession areas, deck design is appropriately based on a split-slab principle to suit the function of the deck as a roof.
Ensuring watertightness in split-slab decks is a particular specialty of Migutan-FP from EMSEAL.
This system features side flashing sheets which are embedded in and encapsulated by the hot-rubberized asphalt waterproofing membrane on the structural deck. The legs of the Migutan-FP are selected in a height to suit the concrete topping thickness.
EMSEAL’s integrated approach to stadium expansion joint sealing centers around the belief that through better design, better products, and better installation we can provide owners with trouble-free expansion joint systems. Keyspan Park is validation of this approach.
