Bollmeier Crane was proud to be Live Nation's hoisting contractor, responsible for erecting the massive stage at U2's 360 concert in St. Louis, July 17th at Busch Stadium.
The stage was a masterpiece of design and mobility. The entire stadium field was covered with an aluminum floor which supported the stage and standing room only audience. The stage (known as the "Claw") and floor were brought to the stadium in 165 trailer loads. Another 100-plus trailers were used to transport the sound and lighting system. This vast world tour requires three complete stages: One in transit, a second under assembly and a third in use.
The first challenge was moving five cranes through the stadium's entrance tunnel. At a test run done five weeks before the concert, we found only 3/8" clearance from the top of a 100-ton crane to one section of electrical conduit mounted on the top of the tunnel. The ability to enter through the tunnel was vital to the set-up and allowed the concert to be held at Busch in the two weeks between Cardinals home baseball games.
The stadium sod was removed on Monday, the aluminum floor was installed on Tuesday. Our work started on Wednesday at 6:00 AM and ended at 2:30 PM on Saturday. The center section weighed 180,000 lbs. and was lifted by three 100-ton cranes to a height of approximately 20'. A hydraulic jacking system completed the raising with the four one hundred ton cranes adding leg sections until the top of the Claw could be lowered to the base support pads. The cranes were removed from the stadium for the concert.
We returned with one machine at 12:30 AM on Monday immediately after the concert. The sound system was loaded out and shipped to another concert site at 3:30 AM. All five machines began disassembling the "Claw" early Monday morning. By 8:00 PM Tuesday all units had been loaded out and the machines removed from the stadium. All erection was done in record time.
The job was an opportunity of a lifetime. Everything went exceedingly well -- Bollmeier's field manager Don Robinson, five operators, one mechanic (Jacob Wright) and two oilers did a fantastic job on a high risk, high profile job. Live Nation's employees were highly skilled and organized.
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