SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — The massive project to replace the famous air inflated Carrier Dome roof with a permanent hard shell is about six months in and very much on schedule, according to Syracuse University.
The most visible work right now is the construction of the enormous, white colored pieces of steel forming the crown truss on the ring beam of the building.
The crown truss will help support the new roof with the use of cables.
“They’re big pieces of steel and you have to have the right weather conditions to erect something like that, and again our tolerance on how these pieces are set once they’re up in place need to be perfect,” said Dome Managing Director Pete Sala. “So as we put these pieces in place we have surveyors on roofs of buildings that surround The Dome and they’re trying to make sure they’re perfect as they get set in place.”
Sala said that truss work can go into early April and still keep the project on schedule for the actual roof replacement that’s still to come.
“The project that happens in the second phase is more challenging than what we have going on right now because of the complexity of what it’s going to take to rig up all those cables and everything that hold that roof up, and the lighting, the sound, and the video board all those things that are going with that for the first game,” Sala told NewsChannel 9.
On any given day, depending on what’s happening with the project, there could be between 50 and 200 workers busy with very aspects of the project, both outside and inside The Dome.
“We’re trying to get ahead a little bit for when we let, after the last event, and take the roof down, we’re going to have to do some prep work on that with the speakers coming down from the building and other things that are now attached to the roof,” Sala explained.
They’re also working on protecting the inside of The Dome too when the roof does come down sometime mid to late march.
“It wasn’t designed to be waterproofed because it has a roof on it, so we’re waterproofing that third level bowl because the building is going to be wide open for a very long time,” Sala told NewsChannel 9.
The project is still expected to be finished by the time the SU Football team hosts Colgate inside the newly refurbished Dome on Saturday, September 19.
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