In some sports, there’s a finish line. In constructing sports arenas, there are the finishing touches.

Making it to the finishing touches at Rogers Place is a time of celebration in more ways than one.

“There’s a lot of work now being done in the building to create that overall impact that has us so excited,” said Rick Daviss, the City of Edmonton’s executive director of the Edmonton Arena District.

“While we think this building has great bones, it’s really going to be the finishes and the technology that really set it apart and really create that fan experience that we’re so excited about bringing to the city,” he added.

The team has changed inside Roger’s Place for the final four months before PCL turns over the keys.

The construction crew that was in there during the winter is long gone and a new crew has come on. They’re the finishers.

In hockey terms, they’ve been sent in on the breakaway to put the game away.

The pipes for freezing the ice have been placed in position and the concrete arena floor poured.

The seats have now been installed throughout the entire lower bowl and installation is well underway on the upper levels. The tables are being installed on the loge level and the carpet is being put in place in the suites. The furnishings are going in next week.

The base mechanical and electrical is substantially all in place. Tradesmen are now into completion of the drywalling, the painting and the installation of the millwork and the carpeting.

All of the seats are in the community rink, the boards are in, the glass is up, the tournament room is finished and the scoreboard is in.

“Our takeover day with PCL is Sept. 2,” said Daviss. “We are certainly in the final stretch here and the project site is an absolute beehive of activity. It’s becoming a very interesting place to go now because it literally changes on a daily basis. It’s a real testimony to what can be achieved when you have 960 construction workers going full blast in the building.”

There’s a different look beginning to emerge inside, but it won’t explode into full living colour until the $110 million of technology comes to life when the scoreboard, LED rings, ice projection, 1,200 TV sets and other video boards are fired up.

But there’s a different feel in there now than before they hit the finishing-touches line.

“You can feel the tremendous amount of pride by everybody working on this project. It’s interesting going in the building and seeing so many people wearing their Oilers colours,” said Bob Black, executive vice-president of the Katz Group.

“It’s not uncommon for one of the workers to come up and want to talk to you about the team and how we’re going to acquire a right-handed shooting defenceman,” he laughs.

“I think one of the special things about this building is that it has been constructed by people who, in a very real way, feel they are part of a team to achieve something great,” he said.

Daviss said pride may be the dominant emotion of the moment, but he has a different emotion.

“In my case, I think there is an equal amount of relief as pride,” he said, remembering the early days when Oilers owner Daryl Katz and the City of Edmonton engaged in public mud wrestling.

“Now we’ve passed over the major hurdles and you see the finishing touches in front of your eyes and it’s like, ‘Holy cow, it came together.”

It’s amazing the finishing touches survived.

“Both the City and the Katz Group both believed from the beginning that this building will be measured by what kind of fan experience it provides,” said Black.

“There was always a mutual recognition that we had to ensure that this building was unique in that the finishes were not only beautiful but enduring, and that the technology in this building will stand the test of time.”

How many arenas were built over the years and didn’t get to the finishing-touches line like this one has?

“One of the things that has allowed us to get to this point, where we haven’t sort of shot the budget before we get to the finishing touches, is the way we approached this,” said Daviss.

“Right from the beginning, when we established the budget, we broke it into different categories. There was a set amount for structural, a set amount for seating, a set amount for finishing. When we ran into difficulties with one particular element, we didn’t just go and rob from finishing-touches budget. We were able to get to the finishing touches with the budget still intact.

“There was a lot of attention paid to not sacrifice any of the finishing-touches budget early in the process,” added the city’s lead man on the project.

“I’ll go further than that,” said Black, Katz’ point man.

“It was our observation that a great number of projects, almost all of them, it seems, have made that mistake.

“What too often ends up happening is that because the finishes and the technology are the last pieces that go in, they end up getting sacrificed.

“The finishing touches are the last pieces that get bought and the last pieces that get installed.

“Failures to maintain discipline on the budget early in the process cause an outcome that you simply don’t have the money at the end to achieve your aspirations on the finishes and technology. And I can tell you that has not happened here.”

Each finishing touch offers its own special occasion.

“The actual pour of the ice floor was a very big event that went really well,” said Daviss.

“All of the pipes and everything involved in the ice plant was in place and that pour was immaculate. It was really exciting.”

The seat installation, of course, has been exciting, too, but the effect right now is understated because it looks like they chose a dull grey colour.

“The seats are actually black,” said Black. “They look grey because they’re all covered in plastic.

“The overall design aesthetic has been really important. When we looked at the entire colour palate for the building, we were careful to make sure things were co-ordinated across the building so that it had a flow and there was continuity.

“It’s really important to get that right when you recognize that the technology, with all the video, and particularly all the people, are going to bring a lot of the colour to this building.

“With that in mind, we chose a neutral colour palate to ensure all that colour would really pop. The philosophy was to start with a fairly neutral palate and apply colour to it.”

Black said in terms of colour, it’s like going from midnight in the middle of winter to noon in the middle of spring.

“As you walk through the building now, you really get a sense of those beautiful lines, the coving and the level of detail. This is not a building with a lot of right angles haphazardly stuck together and finished in an imprecise fashion. It’s a building that has beautiful lines and we’re starting to see them more and more every day.

“We don’t have to squint any more to see what it’s going to be. Even if you’re in there a multitude of times during the week, with that many construction and tradesmen working in such a co-ordinated fashion, every day you go in there you see substantial progress.”

Daviss goes back to that one sneak peak they provided citizens.

“When we did that opening for the public to check out the lower bowl, it was such a cold day in the middle of winter and yet we had so much excitement,” he recalled.

“I worried about that day because I recognized that people were coming in and were just seeing the bones. They weren’t going to have any idea what the level of finish would be, what the level of technology would be in that building.

“The excitement we saw that day, with people just seeing it at that stage, really drove home to me how wonderful it’s going to be to get people in this building on Sept. 10. I can’t wait to see their reaction with the lights on and all that technology going and all the food and beverage installations up and running,” Daviss said of the open house.

“It’s going to be a really exciting event and I think people are going to be very pleased with this building.

“I think it will take until that day. That’s when everybody will recognize the fact that this is a very special building.”

terry.jones@sunmedia.ca

@sunterryjones