Snapshot: If you build it…

By Sigrid Tornquist

In the town of Kenora in northern Ontario, Canada, a waterfront initiative to create a space for people to gather and attend events became a memorable collaborative effort for James Gallagher and Tensile Integrity Inc. Using city, federal and community funding, Tensile erected the Harbourdome Project in the spring of 2011, since renamed the Whitecap Pavilion.

The structure design began as a stage cover with a deployable seasonal audience cover. But as the planning progressed and funders raised additional monies, the project grew to be one large facility with a stage cover and a permanent audience cover, a 225-by-130-foot frame-supported pre-engineered tension structure, standing 55 feet tall.

“It was an exciting project to work on,” Gallagher says. “The team that was involved—including the suppliers, the customer and the customer’s consultants—was terrific to work with. What made it really successful to me was that the facility needed to be expanded the year after it was built. Here we were, thinking it was being over-built for what they were originally requesting, but they ended up outgrowing it because it created such popular waterfront demand.”

Sigrid Tornquist is a freelance author and editor based in St. Paul, Minn. She is also the associate editor of InTents magazine, a publication of the Industrial Fabrics Association International.