Ron Bilodeau has seen it countless times — venue operators who think they need seating when what they really need is an experience. As manager of Government Contracts & The Hussey University EDU Programs with Hussey Seating Company, Bilodeau understands that successful venue design goes far beyond simply providing places to sit.
“What we provide is seating, but ultimately what we provide is a front row seat where people go to create memories, whether it’s watching a graduation, or watching their son, daughter or nephew in an athletic event,” Bilodeau says. “It’s really creating that vision that you have the best seat in the house to see whatever event it is you’re there to watch and have that experience. It’s more about that memory creation with the participant on the floor than with your friends and the fan section, whoever it may be. At the end of the day, it’s not about the seating — it’s about what’s happening within the venue itself, and we’re just helping create that.”
This philosophy is driving a fundamental shift in how facility managers approach venue design. Rather than treating seating as a static afterthought, operators are leveraging a variety of flexible seating solutions and layouts to transform traditional gymnasiums and outdoor venues into dynamic, multi-use spaces that serve both competitive athletics and broader community needs.
Strategic planning and collaboration
Successful seating begins long before installation, according to Bilodeau. The key lies in a comprehensive needs assessment and collaborative planning. “The original part of it is just completing the due diligence of having them understand what they’re trying to achieve,” he says, “whether it’s a competitive gymnasium for volleyball, basketball, whatever it may be, or is it to get more focused on after-school rec or open gym for more kids than competitive athletics?”
Community expectations add another layer of complexity. “What does the community think they have privileges to use as a venue that they paid for?” Bilodeau asks. “A lot of times they go into it half thinking and then they’re like, ‘Oh, well, we didn’t know we were going to do a cheerleading competition in here.’ That’s a different setup than a basketball game, even though it’s a gymnasium, and you think it’s the same. It’s not the same.”
Bilodeau also notes that the planning process must account for operational realities.
“What do you have for resources, meaning people labor? How much conversion time do you have to go from one event to another? Do you have multiple events in a day or are you talking about a different type of event each day?” says Bilodeau. “How many different ways do you use the gymnasium in one day? Do you open and close the bleachers? Do you have to reconfigure things? Are you just raising and lowering curtainwall dividers? A lot of that will dictate what kind of seating system would be best for that venue.”
Photo courtesy of Hussey Seating Company
The arena effect
The trend toward what Bilodeau calls “arena style” configurations is reshaping expectations at every level.
“Everyone wants to be the next level up, meaning if you’re a high school, you want to look like a college. If you’re a college, you want to look like a professional venue,” says Bilodeau. “People are trying to make their gymnasiums specifically look more like an arena, which means they’re trying to configure seating 360 degrees around the venue, so it feels like you’re walking into what we’d all call an arena kind of event today.”
This transformation isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about engagement. “It just creates a different level of energy and excitement, from both the fan base as well as the athletes on the floor, and it raises the level of that venue, what the feel of it is,” Bilodeau says.
The impact extends beyond individual schools. Bilodeau references a project that started as a traditional fieldhouse with “two sets of bleachers on each side, like a typical gymnasium,” but later became something entirely different through strategic reconfiguration. “It became more of an arena-style venue,” Bilodeau explains. “As a result, schools within the region would end up securing that venue for larger events because they wanted that same feel and excitement in the venue and in the game that they knew they couldn’t execute at their own facility.”
Such facility transformations open the door to new revenue opportunities. “It creates the ability to have more of an event center kind of feel where you could do concerts, you could do stage events at one end and close telescopic seating,” Bilodeau says. “It’s kind of taking that high school and middle school gymnasium that we’ve all grown up with and making it a truly multipurpose venue.”
Photo courtesy of Kay Park Recreation
Outdoor flexibility
While indoor arena-style configurations grab attention, innovative outdoor solutions are also offering venue operators more options. Kay Park Recreation has fostered partnerships that demonstrate how portable seating can create shared community assets.
“A county fair in Iowa just built new fairgrounds, but they don’t have the funds yet to build permanent grandstands,” says Chad DeBoer, vice president of marketing and sales at Kay Park Recreation. “So, they use a bunch of our Jiffy Mover bleachers, which is a highway-towable hydraulic opening bleacher, and put them end to end and create outdoor seating, but they also share them with the school district.”
The arrangement benefits both parties. “The school district will just transport them over to the school for extra seating for the homecoming game or graduation,” DeBoer says, adding that the school also owns smaller Jiffy Mover units that can be repositioned around campus. “They use them at baseball, and then they bring them over to football when they have big games and they put them in the end zone for the band. It gets the bands out of the stands and nobody’s messing with their instruments.”
The portability factor opens up entirely new venue possibilities. DeBoer recounts how one high school used highway-towable bleachers in unique ways. “They took one of those highway bleachers and backed it right inside the building for a wrestling meet. It enclosed a whole end,” says DeBoer, noting that the same flexibility works for previously unseated events. “Cross country was a unique one. You may have never had seating for cross country, but they’ll haul those bleachers out there and push the button and unfold them when they go to the conference meets. Gets all your kids in one place, and fans can sit there, too.”
Photo courtesy of Hussey Seating Company
Hidden benefits, creative solutions
Flexible seating systems often deliver unexpected advantages beyond their primary function. At a high school in Maine, Bilodeau’s team integrated storage solutions beneath tiered seating configurations. “We subdivided out the banks of seating on the sidelines with storage tunnels and then tiered seating above it. So from the main floor, it looks like large banks of seating, but within that, you have tiered seating on the upper level, storage and offices underneath the system.”
The facility also incorporated tip-and-roll seating units under the basketball backstops. While designed for creating “high energy, close-to-the-action” seating, the athletic director discovered an unintended benefit. “The director told me, ‘We get more use out of that when we do competitive cheerleading and competitive dance,’ ” says Bilodeau. “They actually use the bleachers for pre-staging. As you have your different groups rolling through, that’s how they manage the dance moms and dads with the cameras. That’s where they tell the parents, ‘You’re in stage one.’ ”
The impact on event management proved significant. “You don’t know how much effort that saves on just managing people,” Bilodeau says. “They’re there to manage the event. They’re not there to herd cats, but with the new seating, it’s much easier. They just say, ‘All right, parents move to stage two,’ and they know where they’re going.”
Photo courtesy of Hussey Seating Company
Differentiated experiences
Modern venues increasingly recognize that different audience segments have varying needs and preferences. “We’re seeing a trend as the U.S. population is aging — people want more back support, whether it’s a simple backrest or a chair,” Bilodeau says. “We’re seeing differentiated seating areas become more of a focus.”
This segmentation creates opportunities for enhanced fan experiences. “There’s definitely a trend for different levels of seating experience, whether it’s being closer to the action with more comfortable seats or farther away from the action with the most comfortable seats,” Bilodeau says, adding that the approach recognizes that “if you’re walking in the building at mid-level, the top rows with chairback seating are where the parents and grandparents sit. They’re not going to want to walk all the way down to the floor and to the front row. They want to sit there with good sight lines, nice back support, easy access to food and restrooms.”
Aside from addressing the needs of varying crowd segments, operators must also meet evolving accessibility requirements. “ADA is very specific, and you have to have that seating integrated within the whole seating experience, not just placed in a corner at the end of the court,” Bilodeau explains. “It’s really understanding all the programming that they want that building to do, and then within each of those programs, how do we make sure all the ADA requirements are meeting the intent of the federal mandate.”
Hussey has also developed innovative solutions to address real-world accessibility needs. “We have what we call the Flex Row. The code’s written as one wheelchair to one companion seat, but I’ve been to a hockey game and watched a van pull up and four gentlemen get out, all in wheelchairs, all decked out with team gear, and they’re all going to want to go sit together,” Bilodeau says, explaining how the system allows varying segments of the first row of bleachers to be tucked underneath to accommodate more wheelchairs on the event floor. “The Flex Row gives the venue some foresight to know how to reconfigure the space, but it also gives them the ability to change on the fly and be more agile in how they can adapt.”
Bilodeau says safety compliance and ADA requirements remain nonnegotiable. “It’s not a nice-to-have. You’re not grandfathered into any specific code compliance. If anything were to happen, the venue is the one liable, and then everyone else who touched it from there.”
For portable outdoor solutions, Kay Park likewise emphasizes comprehensive safety features. “Safety is always number one,” says Marilee Gray, the company’s advertising manager and senior sales associate. “We meet all the building code requirements and most recent safety requirements — guard rails, double footboards, risers. Everything we make can meet those standards.”
The future of seating lies in an increasing variety of solutions that can help operators make the most of a single facility, as well as their budget. As venues continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, manufacturers are responding with products that promise to further revolutionize how communities use and experience their facilities.
The message from both manufacturers and successful venue operators is clear: In today’s environment, flexibility isn’t just an advantage, it’s essential for creating sustainable, community-serving venues that can adapt to changing needs while delivering memorable experiences for every event.
Photo courtesy of Hussey Seating Company
Automation on the horizon
While today’s seating solutions already offer impressive versatility, Ron Bilodeau, manager of Innovation and EDU at Hussey Seating, envisions a not-so-distant future in which venue operations become as automated as modern automobiles. “I think what everyone will be working toward is called a touch-free solution, so that you don’t need to manually configure things,” Bilodeau says. “You don’t need to manually put pile steps into position. You don’t manually need to put handrails into the proper position. When you open the system, it’s safe, code-compliant, and ready to go.”
The technology already exists in other industries.
“When you look at what a Tesla or a Waymo can do today, there’s no reason that the administrative staff at the front desk of the school can’t look in the gym and say, ‘All right, there’s no one in the school, there’s no one under the bleacher. I’m going to hit the configuration for volleyball.’ ”
Bilodeau envisions complete automation where doors lock during reconfiguration, the system reconfigures itself, then doors unlock when ready. “If you can have cars drive down the road without anyone in them, this isn’t a far stretch with the technology available,” he says.
Aside from push-of-a-button automation, Bilodeau also envisions individual technology embedded into every seat. “The big trends right now are USB ports in seats for charging devices, and then of course heated and cooled seats,” Bilodeau says, noting that realistic wish lists have their limits. “The tough one that we hear a lot from people is adjustable individualized seating, like your car seat, where you can recline or raise your seat. That’s a balance between individual spectator comfort and adjustability with code compliance and safety, and code compliance and safety trumps everything else.”
