SCI Architects has designed sports and entertainment buildings since 1984 and claims more than 100 completed projects in the category. The practice works from 469 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan across architecture, interior design, master planning and project management, with arenas, event centers, training facilities and recreation centers making up most of the portfolio. SCI is architect on the Delta Center Transformation in Salt Lake City, Smith Entertainment Group’s multi-year rebuild of the arena into a venue that has to work for an NBA and an NHL tenant at once. Dual-sport conversion is a narrow specialty and the seating-bowl geometry is the hard part. Few firms have done it at this scale.
SCI Architects is a specialist practice, and the scope it sells is broader than drawings. Alongside architectural design and interior design, the firm offers space programming, feasibility studies, revenue projection, stakeholder engagement, and both renovation-and-transformation work and new-build design. Revenue projection as a named service is the tell: the firm pitches itself on the business case for a venue — premium seating, programmable space, what the building can earn on non-event days — as much as on its form.
Client types are spelled out and they are not all professional franchises. The firm works with professional sport teams, amateur sports organizations, municipalities and government entities, sport agencies and community organizations, which explains the range of facility types: arenas and event centers, stadiums, recreation and training facilities, ice centers and basketball campuses. A municipal recreation center and an NHL-scale arena are handled by the same office.
The numbers the firm publishes about its own record are specific — more than fifty arenas and event centers, over a million square feet of designed space, and more than a hundred sports and entertainment projects. Venues featured in the portfolio include Madison Square Garden, TD Garden, the KIA Forum, Xfinity Mobile Arena, Mullett Arena, Rogers Centre, Scotiabank Arena and BMO Field, and the work is described as spanning the United States and other countries rather than being regionally bound.
Master planning is a separate practice area with its own project list, and it is land-use work in the real sense: district creation and placemaking anchored by a venue, with design decisions driven by local demographics, aimed at guiding development for cities and developers rather than just siting a building. Published master plans include Brampton LIVE, the GTA Centre, the Lansdowne development, LeBreton Flats, The Lighthouse and Expo 2000. An owner can commission the planning work ahead of, or independently of, a building commission.
Leadership is partner-led and flat. Five partners — Brian Brisbin, Murray Beynon, Greg Alexander, Chris O’Reilly and Tone Frisina — are listed with senior directors and specialists including Jeff Armstrong, Karol Bratt and Lawrence Lippold, plus a chief financial and legal officer, Sean McGarrity, business development through Gary Green, and Garret Kinjerski on marketing and media. For a firm working on publicly financed venues, having finance and legal represented at officer level in-house is relevant to how a deal gets structured.
The office is in midtown Manhattan on Seventh Avenue, and new-business and general inquiries are routed to a marketing address at the firm’s own domain.
