Acrisure Arena dynamically transformed entertainment options for residents and visitors to
California’s Coachella Valley. Project developer Oak View Group created a versatile, mid-sized
hockey arena and concert venue with big-league capabilities for the region, which - despite
being the tenth largest county in the United States - has been historically overlooked by the
indoor concert and professional sports industries. When it opened two weeks early and on
budget in December 2022, it enriched the Palm Springs community with a flexible, state-of-the-
industry hub for year-round indoor entertainment. Acrisure Arena exceeded expectations
in its inaugural year, boasting a string of resounding successes. The venue hosted dozens of
sold-out hockey games and packed concerts, including acts as varied as Lizzo, Grupo Firme,
and Harry Styles.
The arena’s 10,000 fixed seats provide an intimate and exciting venue for professional hockey
and basketball, and the facility can handle up to 11,500 patrons for concerts and other events.
The sophisticated and flexible show rigging system provides significantly greater capacity
than even much larger venues in neighboring markets, enhancing its attractiveness to
entertainers considering tour locations on the West Coast.
To create efficient, safe, and affordable structural systems for the arena and the adjacent,
interconnected Berger Foundation Iceplex, the project’s structural engineer had to find
solutions for three very different types of extreme loadings. Foremost are seismic forces
that are among the highest anywhere in California, generated by the powerful San Andreas
Fault just three miles away. In addition, the Coachella Valley desert regularly experiences
near-hurricane speed winds, requiring special engineering attention to every façade and roof
element. Finally, to ensure the arena is flexible enough to host any type of modern touring
show, substantial and dynamic show loads are attached to the structure’s expansive rigging
grid, itself suspended from the 310 ft span roof.
In combination, the earthquake, wind, and show loading criteria created hundreds of load
combinations and presented extraordinary technical challenges to the structural engineer.
The structural engineer demonstrated engineering excellence by finding creative and
affordable structural solutions for each challenge. In the process the engineer developed an
innovative new application for buckling restrained braces (BRBs) as horizontal seismic struts
between the arena and the shorter adjacent public Iceplex. The approach is economically
keeping both structures safe and eliminated the costs and long-term maintenance
headaches of a conventional seismic joint. The building’s show rigging capabilities exceed
those of many much larger markets, making Acrisure Arena a very appealing West Coast
location for performers who are launching national and global tours. Thanks in large part
to the engineer’s contributions, the venue was economically and rapidly built and has
exceeded every owner expectation.
