KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City has its fingerprints all over SoFi Stadium.
"It's a stunning piece of architecture," said Bill Zahner, CEO of KC-based architectural firm Zahner.
Standing tall in Inglewood, California, SoFi is home to the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams.
"It's a piece of art," said Jordan Colwell, Zahner process engineer.
SoFi may sit under the bright city lights, but much of its construction was completed in the Midwest.
"It can be done in the middle of the country, and some really incredible, timeless work can be produced," Zahner said.
His firm had a hand in 34,789 pieces to be exact. The company designed and manufactured the aluminum exterior panels for the roof canopy.
"Because we had almost 35,000 unique parts, it was a challenge to figure out how to make the engineering files, make the programming files, make the brake files, everything that really goes into an individual part," Colwell said. "A lot of times you're making thousands of the same thing, and in this case, there was no same thing."
No piece is bigger than 6 feet, and each piece is different.
It was a project that took nearly four years to complete.
"We did evaluations, we researched machines, we actually bought a number of pieces of equipment specifically for SoFi Stadium," Colwell said. "They're the biggest, baddest, best pieces of equipment that we could get to really ensure we had the best quality product in the most efficient method we could do it."
Zahner has been around for 125 years and has worked on projects all over the world.
"In Kansas City, past work would be the tops of Bartle Hall, the roof on the Starlight Theater," Zahner said.
Currently, Zahner is working on the U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, the most visited human-made tourist attraction in Colorado.
"Right now, we're involved with the Air Force Academy rework and working with JE Dunn locally, and we're removing the skin, rebuilding that and putting it back together. That would probably be our largest project," Colwell said.
With stadiums like SoFi and Allegiant in Las Vegas, Nevada, setting the bar, Zahner is hoping to have the opportunity to work on others in the future.
"The new stadiums coming around in the United States, and possibly in this city, we hope to be involved and be able to show and produce something that stands the test of time," Zahner said.
