Pieces in place for Toronto’s Indy race

When a construction project takes place, the build normally only occurs once. A building goes up, a road goes in and the next time a crew arrives it’s to renovate or maintain the structure.

Each year a different sort of build takes place in and around Toronto’s Exhibition Place.

It’s the creation of the annual Honda Indy Toronto racetrack and related supports, which include race pits, an 11,000-seat grandstand, hospitality area, fences and blocks.

The big 85-lap race takes place this year on Sunday, July 17. Pre-race ceremonies get underway at 2:15 p.m. and the flag drops at 3:15 p.m. Qualifying races begin on Friday, July 15.

And despite having to make some design changes to accommodate new construction, the venue will be ready well in time for the practice rides that begin Thursday, July 14, says James Tario, the race’s director of track operations and owner of James Tario Management Inc.

Tario has put together races in Brazil, the United States and Canada. He contracts himself with the promoter that owns the rights to the Toronto race, Green Savoree Racing Promotions. He also builds the Firestone Grand Prix track in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Setting up tracks using city streets is tricky because the locations are active, he says. Most of the work in terms of laying blocks to define the course and establishing a debris fence is done at night with an 8 p.m. start in the exhibition grounds and a 9 p.m. start along Lakeshore Boulevard, which is also used for the track. They close lanes on the Lakeshore while the night work takes place.

The labour force that builds the event’s main components totals more than 100 workers for five or six weeks.

One of the key tasks is to ensure the surfaces are as smooth as possible by grinding off bumps and repaving. The road surface through Exhibition Place has been changed several times; the Lakeshore has been repaved and there’s concrete in the corners. And then there is the damage Toronto’s freeze-thaw winters create.

"If it was a permanent facility, you could just pave the whole thing and be done with it," Tario says, but notes such challenges are typical of temporary racetracks through cities. "It’s chasing small problems year to year."

Little has changed over the years in terms of the type of equipment and materials or the way the set-up is approached. They use heavy-duty lift machines, manpower and cranes to put the components in place. Fences are taller than they used to be and blocks are larger too.

Each block weighs 9,000 pounds and the Toronto race uses more than 2,000 blocks to define the track. They truck blocks at night from a Cherry Street storage facility five kilometres away.

"You’re into close to four miles of block by the time you get everything down," Tario says, noting the track is 1.76 miles (2.8 kilometres).

He has been putting the racetrack together since the first race in 1986.

"When I started working on it, I worked at Exhibition Place," he says. "In 1985 we went around the site with a race promoter and with the series representative and picked out a track that would work for both racing and the site itself."

Since that time, there has been only one major adjustment to the track, to Turn 11, he says, when the Enercare Centre was built.

This year, however, comes another adjustment following the race organizers’ decision to swap the locations of the pit lane and racetrack.

Mike Chrobok, vice-president of special events for Tower Events and Seating Inc. in Toronto, says the swap accommodates the newly-built 29-storey Hotel X on the exhibition grounds. There are also slight adjustments to the location of the grandstands and hospitality suite locations.

Even small changes in grading can affect the design of the temporary structures. This year, for example, the scaffolding structure for the hospitality suite has been designed to accommodate a six-foot drop in grade from east to west, Chrobok says.

There are thousands of scaffolding components for the temporary structures and to keep track, company staff create material takeoff lists per structure. They also schedule delivery of the components to align with when each structure is built.

Chrobok explains race organizers develop a move-in schedule for everyone and assign times that areas can be released to crews for construction.

The company maintains an inventory of 80,000 to 90,000 feet of seating components. Last year, 35,000 feet of the materials were used at the Pan American Games in Toronto along with five million pounds of scaffolding.

"Typically the scaffolding seating is used over and over and over," Chrobok explains. Some products being used in Toronto, for example, were sent from the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Montreal that took place in June.

It takes five weeks to install the components. Striking the structures takes two weeks.

"Last year we were out in five days because of the Pam Am Games," Chrobok recalls. "So we just increased manpower and we were fortunate enough last year that a number of the (Pan Am) venues were on site at Exhibition Place."

Like Tario, Chrobok has been involved since year one of the race. At that time he worked for another company.

Many of the people who work with him have 20 years experience. Tower hires workers from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 27.

"Every year, the guys come up with more efficient and safer ways to construct it," he says. Sometimes, if the grandstand has to be higher, they’ll build seating components on the ground and use a crane to fly them into place.

All of that repetition also generates familiarity for the contractors who have been involved with the race for so long.

"When you do things repetitively it goes a lot smoother," Chrobok says.