Despite the help of 75 or 80 people moving snow off the collapsed "Dome” in Queensbury on Saturday, despite well-wishers and the fact that clients have not yet cancelled their winter business at the Adirondack Sports Complex, Doug Miller, the complex’s owner, said Monday morning that the company might not survive.
At the Adirondack Sports Complex at 326 Sherman Ave., he was standing next to a pay-loader with a bad hydraulic line--an insult added to injury since the loader was rigged to move snow--and explained that insurance adjusters will come to see the dome and manufacturers of air-supported structures like it will help him learn if he needs to repair or replace the structure that fell last week under at least 32 inches of snow.
A fix could come by the end of January, but may take much longer--six months--Doug Miller said.
“With the pandemic and money we’ve burned through,” he said, then shifted the sentence: “We’ve burned through close to $500,000 in the last nine months.”
Right now is when the company makes its money.
The dome--a space of 108,000 square feet filled with indoor sports fields--extends the playing season for spring and summer sports such as baseball, softball and soccer into year-round sports. The company website lists the youth sports plus adult leagues and other activities that are made possible inside the heated dome.
It is also used for boat shows and other conventions.
In early October, the sports complex posted a seven-page list of rules that teams, players, coaches and parents would need to follow in order to keep The Dome open for some indoor sports under COVID regulations. Statewide, the regulations kept all facilities such as theirs running well below a full schedule.
He and his wife Teresa make 80% of their money from November to March, Doug said, and the company came out of last winter in great shape before the pandemic hit. Looking exhausted and deflated on a cold, grey day, he said the cash was gone.
The collapse occurred Thursday.
When the Millers realized how much more snow was falling than predicted, Teresa said Doug called the crew to help with a controlled deflation, an act that might have saved the building. But even getting to the location was tough.
Steve Thurston (2020)
Batting cage poles bent after the roof collapsed upon them, Doug Miller said.
The crew quickly moved equipment at the southern end of the dome toward the north and disassembled it as needed. The batting cage poles--about six inches in diameter--at the north end were still up when the roof gave way. The poles were bent from the weight.
Doug said the Dome failed in two places before it hit the poles: at a shroud connection on the north end and a seam that broke on the east side. It was after that that the roof came down upon the batting cage poles and tore further.
It would not have fallen at all if they had gotten the snow that was predicted: 16 inches or less of light powder.
Normally, the heat inside the dome warms the skin enough to create a thin, slick layer of water between the skin and snow, and most snow just slides off.
“[The snow] was falling at such a fast rate, it couldn’t keep a wet layer,” he said.
The volunteers and friends completed what needed to be done on Saturday. The area near the north end, where the worst of the damage occurred, is visible to inspectors.
Doug said he is hoping to get a large, clamshell bucket to lift off the wales of snow still on the rest of the deflated building.
He said, “That’s a tremendous amount of snow.”