Prominent Los Angeles sports architect Dan Meis, one of two lead designers of Staples Center, has joined the largest sports architecture firm in the country and will build up its Los Angeles office.
Meis is moving to Populous, a Kansas City, Mo.-based firm with offices in 11 cities, including New York, London and Hong Kong. This is the second big move in as many years for Meis, who in 2008 merged his Venice-based Meis Architects with global architecture firm Aedas.
Meis, 49, created a sports and entertainment design studio within Aedas, but said that the advantages of working at Populous couldn’t be ignored.
“In the past, we would compete for the same projects,” he said. “I thought that a consolidation of resources would make a powerful team so I reached out to one of the principals in the London practice. They had been thinking of opening a West Coast office and this was the right time for the both of us.”
Populous, formerly known as HOK Sports, was a division of architecture firm HOK, one of the largest architecture firms in the country. Members of the sports practice bought out their practice in 2008 and rebranded themselves.
The Los Angeles office of Populous has about 20 people on staff, a number that Meis expects to grow to about 40 people. That level of staff will allow the firm to work on multiple projects at the same time.
He brings a large local project with him. Meis is the lead architect for Ed Roski Jr.’s proposed NFL stadium plan in the City of Industry. It’s not the first time that Meis has collaborated with Roski, who developed the Staples Center with Los Angeles sports and entertainment company AEG.
The NFL stadium project is still undergoing some design changes as the stadium uses become clearer. Over the past few months, Meis has been working on upgrades to the design to make it compliant with requirements for stadiums seeking to host World Cup games. Los Angeles is one of 18 potential cities to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup games if the games are awarded to the United States.
“We literally changed the configuration of seating so that sight lines are little steeper and catch every corner of the soccer stadium,” Meis said.
He may also have some help designing the stadium for soccer from his new colleagues. The Populous group is currently working on stadium projects for Brazil’s 2014 World Cup.
Star Power
The National Hockey League may not have too many super stars, but now it will have super heroes.
Legendary comic book creator Stan Lee and the NHL have teamed up to create a new group of superheroes to engage young fans and introduce new people to the sport.
The characters, one for each team, will have some NHL elements and will represent each team and city, but won’t necessarily be set in the world of hockey. Each character will star in an individual comic book series that will launch in February. A separate comic series that will feature all of the characters will launch after that. The content also will be used in broadcast, merchandise and mobile applications.
Lee, who currently serves as chairman and chief creative officer of Santa Monica-based Pow Entertainment LLC, is best known for co-creating Marvel Comic stars such as Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Iron Man.
The joint hockey venture is called Guardian Media Entertainment LLC, with the creations set to debut at the NHL All-Star Game on Jan. 30.
Bike Lane
The Amgen Tour of California announced its schedule for 2011 and not even a single stage will be held in downtown Los Angeles, where presumably tour owner AEG would love to show off its recently completed L.A. Live and Convention Center hotels to the world.
Instead, AEG, which held a time trial downtown in this year’s May race, opted to create a more challenging mountain stage that will take riders up to Mt. Baldy Village. The time trial stage will be held in Solvang during the sixth stage of the race.
Riders expected to participate include Lance Armstrong, who crashed and didn’t finish last year’s race, and Levi Leipheimer, who won the event from 2007-2009.
The eight-stage race will begin on May 15 in Lake Tahoe. Its first five stages will proceed south with stops in Sacramento, Modesto, San Jose, and Paso Robles. The last two stages will be held in Southern California. Stage 7 will travel from Claremont to Mt. Baldy and the final stage will travel from Santa Clarita to title sponsor Amgen’s headquarters city Thousand Oaks.
Riders will cover a distance of more than 800 miles in the race, which in its six short years of existence has become the pre-eminent North American cycling race.
Staff reporter David Nusbaum can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 236.
