Steel Makes Its Way to New City Stadiums

Recycled materials that go into making the steel beams that form the nearly completed skeletons of the two new baseball stadiums in the Bronx and Queens could include a neighbor’s old Chevrolet or a discarded washing machine from a local Laundromat.Of the nearly 17,500 tons of steel that has already been hauled to the new Yankee Stadium and to Citi Field, about 60% was once ferrous scrap: steel goods collected from junk yards, town dumps, and the back rooms of automobile repair shops.The business of amassing steel scrap is the first step in the creation of the steel beams and trusses that form the backbone of the city’s baseball stadiums, both set to open in 2009.America’s largest scrap broker, the David J. Joseph Company, is providing most of the steel goods that will eventually be melted down and fabricated into beams for both the Yankees and the Mets. The company buys its steel from scrap dealers and large manufacturing companies, which often sell leftover steel from production.Scrap steel, much of which has been broken down into fist-size pieces using a machine called a shredder, is then shipped to Blytheville, Ark., home to the American headquarters of the Nucor-Yamato Steel Company.Nucor, a company that has capitalized on the rising costs and environmental hazards of manufacturing virgin steel, recycles the scrap into heaping pieces of steel. Roughly 70% less energy is consumed in recycling scrap steel than in manufacturing steel from iron and coal, a spokesman for Nucor, Leonard Dryden, said.Besides working with the contractors in charge of building New York City’s baseball stadiums, Nucor is manufacturing steel beams for the new Meadowlands Stadium and the World Trade Center Memorial, a sales analyst at Nucor, Paul Lester, said.Mr. Lester, who also leads tours of Nucor’s huge plant, said the process of creating a large steel beam takes about three weeks.The scrap is first melted down and turned into a single “semi-finished” piece of steel. The semi-finished product, which takes about 35 minutes to create, is then stored for two to three weeks before it is shaped into beams at the factory’s rolling mill.Before any of the steel manufactured by Nucor can be installed in the outfields and concourses of the new stadiums, it must first be fabricated into the specific sizes and shapes called for in the blueprints. This is where the Canam Steel Corporation comes in.Steel is shipped in bulk to a Canam plant in Quebec, where the project managers, Jacques Renaud for Citi Field and Daniel Renaud for the new Yankee Stadium, direct crews that cut and mold steel joists, trusses, and beams.Jacques Renaud, who is not related to Daniel Renaud, has a crew of about 330 people, including subcontractors, working underneath him in order to fabricate and install the 13,000 tons of steel that will be used in the construction of Citi Field.So far, about 9,000 tons of steel has been transported to the park. As a tractor-trailer can haul about 20 tons of steel, Canam has made about 600 shipments to Queens from Canada, Mr. Renaud said.The remaining steel will be used to build the dramatic entranceway at Citi Field, the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, and some of the upper level seating, Mr. Renaud said.When the new Yankee Stadium is finished, it will be constructed from about 13,000 tons of steel. Of that number, about 7,000 tons has already been installed in the Bronx, with another 1,500 tons currently being stored at a holding site in South Plainfield, N.J., Daniel Renaud said.With most of the steel already in the city, both project managers say they are excited about building what the architects say are the most unique parts of both stadiums. In the coming months, the Yankees will build a steel replica of the famous white fence in the outfield of Yankee Stadium, and the Mets will begin constructing the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.

Steel Makes Its Way to New City Stadiums

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