TERRACOVER at Ford Field for the Rolling Stones

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TERRACOVER at Ford Field for the Rolling Stones

March 20th, 2009

In late August 2002, Ford Field in Detroit, USA, became the latest addition to the professional stadium landscape in the US as it opened its doors for the first time. The grand opening week was a series of gala events and invitation only dinners as Detroit welcomed a long sought after addition to the downtown. Those grand opening events were followed by the feature attraction, the Detroit Lions opening football games and the ever-popular Rolling Stones worldwide tour.

The new stadium is state of the art in every way including the latest in synthetic infill turf systems. This, however, created it’s own headache when it came to protecting the artificial turf for all of the non-sport events - synthetic infill products are designed with loose rubber pellets as a base material making the use of traditional vacuums, sweepers or floor scrubbers impossible.

So what was the answer? The facilities engineer at Ford Field, Bob Gardner, investigated the best system to be used for both the grand opening and the Rolling Stones Concert. His conclusion? Use Terracover®… Both the grand opening gala events and the Rolling Stones ‘Forty Licks’ world tour gig in October 2002 went forward without a hitch and once again the Terraplas family of products proved to be the answer when it comes to protection of a highly valued sports surface.

Why does Ford Field use Terracover® to protect artificial turf?

The load capacities allow any concert or special event components to be built directly onto the Terracover® flooring system.
Terracover® provided an excellent surface for all support services (tables, chairs, production, etc.) to move cases, carts and, as needed, forklifts on the floor.
The interlocking cams and overlapping edge design is unique among protection systems. This provides a monolithic floor.
Cleaning is always an issue. At Ford Field a hallway floor scrubber was run over the system while it was still in place. The result? - it was clean for the next event.