Athletic FacilitiesCentral OhioColumbus

Madison-Plains Bleacher Installation

Madison Plains High School in London, Ohio replaced both banks of gymnasium bleachers rather than keep repairing them. The December 2024 contract covers two wall-attached telescopic bleacher systems manufactured by Hussey Seating Company, along with a new door giving access to the space beneath the bleachers. It was bought pre-bid through The Ohio Purchasing Council.

Bank A runs 99 feet along the wall at 14 tiers and seats 688 on 10-inch-deep seats. It has four aisles with auto-rotating aisle rails in black, four hinged front aisle steps, and 12 ADA-recoverable seats. It operates on a second-row power frame, motorized, with a pendant controller and limit switches. Bank B runs 106 feet 10 1/2 inches at 6 tiers and seats 314, also 10 inches deep, with four aisles, black P-Rails and four fixed front aisle steps. Bank B is fixed rather than powered, and comes with attic stock of 24 seat modules.

Both systems use an all-clear polyurethane finish, or vinyl gray covering on plywood, for the walking deck areas, and the power frame motors run at 208 volts. Seat color was approved by the district before the order was placed. A first-year inspection is included and the warranty is Hussey's. Installation is set for summer 2025. What the district gets is a gym with two banks sized to how the room is actually used, accessible seating designed into the layout rather than added at the edge of it, and a serviceable space underneath.

New green telescoping bleachers folded along the Madison-Plains gym wall

Madison-Plains gymnasium with the new bleachers retracted

Madison-Plains bleachers extended with aisle handrails

Technical Discussion

Tiers, seats, and the ADA positions you design around

Seat count is the number that gets quoted and the last one that should drive the layout. The two banks here make the point without any help: Bank B is nearly eight feet longer than Bank A and seats 374 fewer people. Length is not what set the capacity. Tier count did — 14 against 6 — and tier count is set by the wall, the ceiling, the sightline down to the floor, and how far a bank can project onto the playing surface when it is open.

So the design runs in that order. How far the bank can extend without crowding the sideline fixes the tier count. Tier count and rise fix the sightlines. Only after both does 10-inch seat depth across 99 feet of wall produce 688 seats. Start from a seat target instead and the bank that comes out either blocks a sightline or eats a sideline.

ADA positions come next, before the general seat plan rather than after it. Bank A's 12 ADA-recoverable positions convert back to standard seating when they are not needed, which is what makes them worth having in a room used for assemblies as well as games. They still have to be reachable from the gym floor without a patron negotiating a tier, and companion seating has to sit adjacent. That is a fixed location on the bottom row, and it constrains where two of the four aisles can land before a seat module is counted.

The aisles take what is left: four on each bank, auto-rotating rails on A and P-Rails on B, four hinged front aisle steps on A and four fixed ones on B — hinged because A's fold as the motorized bank retracts, fixed because B does not move.

Which explains the last difference. Bank A carries second-row power-frame operation at 208 volts with a pendant controller and limit switches; Bank B carries none. Fourteen tiers is not something a custodian pulls out by hand. Six tiers is. The motor went on the bank that needed it.

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