Santa Fe College Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall

OWNER

Santa Fe College

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Construction Cost
$16 million

Completion Date
February 2011

Project Size
36,000 SF

Santa Fe College Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall

Gainesville
Florida

This 600-seat auditorium has two dozen box seats, a 20-person orchestra pit, performer lounges, scene and costume shops, a multi-use classroom, offices, and service and storage areas. The facility also has an amphitheater and outdoor terrace.

The dressing rooms can accommodate up to 200 performers at a time. The back of the house has the costume shop, make-up teaching room, a green room, and space for set designers to construct sets off-stage, keeping the stage available at all times.

The primary structural system features steel frame composite and one-way cast-in-place concrete slabs on load-bearing CMU walls. The 76’ tall stage tower is built using 14” thick cast-in-place concrete walls. The steel rigging grid at the top of the tower is hung from the composite steel roof structure above. Two main structural steel trusses were used to clearspan the audience chamber and support the composite roof slab, suspended catwalk framing, and suspended follow-spot room. The expansive clays native to the site permitted a shallow spread foundation system, but only after much of the subgrade was replaced with engineered fill, foundation drains were added, and grade beams were used under bearing walls.