OVO Athletic Centre

A spectacular view of one of the Great Lakes is likely to make anyone feel like an all-star, but the loudest cheers might belong to the team that built the OVO Athletic Centre (formerly BioSteel Centre). Located on Lake Ontario, this world-class training facility for the NBA’s Toronto Raptors franchise had to be constructed and ready for use in only 13 months – in time for the team and city to host the league’s 2016 All Star Game.

The tight construction schedule put extra emphasis on meeting milestone deadlines. With glass as a primary design element, seamless and efficient “handoffs” between the glass manufacturer, Vitro Architectural Glass; glass fabricator Trulite, Toronto; and the glazing contractor, Merit Glass, were vital.

The successful execution of the supply chain – timely glass shipments and deliveries among the parties combined with adherence to the building’s accelerated and complex glazing requirements – can be attributed in part to the Vitro Concierge Program^®, which was developed specifically to provide logistics management and customized coordination for projects featuring non-standard glass components.

For the OVO Athletic Centre, Trulite, a Vitro Certified^® fabricator, assembled AviProtek^® bird-friendly glass, acid-etched on tinted Optiblue^® glass. This configuration, which created a soft, blue glass exterior, was then fabricated into triple pane insulating glass units (IGUs) with Solarban^® R100 solar control low-e glass.

Project architect Guernsey, Oklahoma City, specified the glass make-up to meet four major design and environmental requirements established by the building’s high-profile tenant and the city’s building codes.

The first three – ensuring privacy and security for players and staff, maximizing views and complying with Toronto’s bird-friendly development guidelines – were accomplished by acid-etching Walker Glass’s AviProtek^® 215 dot pattern on Vitro Glass’s Optiblue^® glass substrate. The fourth, reducing heating and air-conditioning costs in accordance with the city’s energy-efficiency mandates, was achieved with the addition of clear Solarban^® R100 glass.

Trulite worked closely with Merit Glass to ensure that the fabricated glass units were shipped to the construction site on schedule and in alignment with Merit’s expectations.

Two other developments were instrumental in keeping the project on track: The general contractor, EllisDon, guaranteed the sizes of openings, and Trulite arranged to purchase the Optiblue^® glass ahead of time through the Vitro Concierge Program^®.

Although this was Trulite’s first major project involving AviProtek^® glass, Terry Berman, general manager of the company’s Toronto branch, said it was simply a matter of learning how to process the product through the tempering stage that helped to pave the way for the project’s success.

Berman credits precise coordination and collaboration for meeting the tight schedule. “The key was the communication between Trulite, Vitro Glass and Walker Glass to make sure that the glass requirements were met,” he explained.

When it opened on time on February 10, 2016, the OVO Athletic Centre was what every basketball player loves—a slam dunk.