Air Canada Centre Case Study

The Air-Canada Centre is a busy major-metropolitan entertainment facility. It’s home to two professional sports franchises and more than 260 major events each year. When combined with the facility’s other events, this translates into nearly 100 conversions annually that are largely condensed into a bustling nine-month span. While their 15-year-old Hussey seating system was performing well, the Centre wanted to be proactive and reconfigure to grow revenue and increase capacity.

Obstacles & Opportunities
Reconfiguration speed, or “turn”, had always been the central challenge, with in-house teams continuously driven to be faster and more efficient. But as a customer-driven organization, spectator experience was just as important. So they wanted to explore a built-in premium spectator experience for patrons who paid more to be close to the action.

Solutions
“[Hussey] listened, they worked with us, and they understood,” explained Bryan Leslie, Director of Building Operations at The Air-Canada Centre. “[The] most important thing is understanding our business because our business is like no other. We found that working with Hussey was great in working with our calendars, working with our other projects that were on the go, because we never sit still, and working within our timelines and space constraints.”

The Payoff
The Centre’s seating upgrade met all of their objectives, and patron response has been phenomenal. The facility now has brand new state-of-the-art retractable platforms that quickly transform the space to accommodate its vast range of configurations. Staff operational time has also been minimized. “Ultimately, working together, we got it all done,” said Brent Wynne, Manager of Facilities Services at The Air-Canada Centre. “And we’re still really not sure how we did that, to be honest.”