The Challenge – A Tall, Self-Supporting Elevator

The Challenge

Pampa High School is in the middle of Texas in the heart of football country. The school built a new, Texas-sized stadium with a big press box that required an elevator to carry people and equipment up and down. The elevator also had to meet current elevator ADA requirements. To complicate matters, the elevator couldn't be tied into the bleachers. Due to shipping limitations, a two-piece tower would be needed to achieve the height. Multi-piece towers are normal fare for PME; however, they are typically tied into the building structure. As Pampa’s stadium did not have the structure to support this, they needed a self-supporting, multi-piece elevator shaft.

The Solution

Phoenix marshaled its engineers to come up with structural modifications that would enable the 2-piece tower to be completely self-supporting while meeting the current elevator ADA requirements.  Their solution involved beefing up some of the structure by using 6x6 instead of 4x4 tube steel and using thicker base plates with double anchor points.  This creativity maintained the same footprint and general structural design, and the solution added less than $1,000 to the overall project cost.