IMAX contractors use new technique

It wasn’t a new museum exhibit. It wasn’t Bass Pro’s outdoor garage sale or Rotary Club’s Rock N Ribs festival.

Passersby were drawn off of Campbell Avenue and Sunshine Street by a life-size, three-dimensional outline of the IMAX theater and its rotunda slated for the site.

Walton Construction, the company hired to build the new facility, placed 14 boom and scissor lifts of various heights connected by ropes between Bass Pro Shops and Wonders of Wildlife June 13–16. That outline allowed construction crews could see exactly how the structure would fit into the tight space. Just 70 feet separate the Bass Pro and Wonders of Wildlife buildings where a portion of the IMAX and an adjoining rotunda will be constructed.

The pre-construction technique, called a field mock-up, creates a full-scale representation of the structure’s rooflines and basic shape.

Chris Hall, project manager with Walton and a 13-year construction industry veteran, said the concept is something different for this area. “It’s pretty unique; I’ve never done it in all my years of construction,” Hall said. “As opposed to looking at a two-dimensional drawing, you can actually see it in three dimensions.”

Bass Pro owner John L. Morris visited the field mock-up June 15, and Walton crews took the lifts down the next day.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the IMAX was held in March 2004, but funding questions and a redesign has delayed progress. In the meantime, Morris has stepped up and said he would fund the theater, a central rotunda connecting it to WOW and Bass Pro’s Outdoor World and an conservation education center. Hall said the field mock-up was important to show how the theater will tie into its surroundings.

“Looking at the site in terms of a campus, we wanted to give someone the opportunity to walk in to the facility and choose their destination from three different venues, as opposed to having an IMAX theater in the back 40, so to speak,” he said. “I think it boils down to multiple visits per customer. Rather than having the visitor just go to the IMAX, they can go to, for example, the Wonders of Wildlife as well.”

Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc. is the architect on the project, which is scheduled for completion in late spring or early summer 2006. While the design is not final, Hall said construction should begin in the next few months.