The restrooms of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA made it to ESPN's NFL Homepage with an article by Dave Fleming describing his transformational experience in the stadium’s bathrooms.

The new Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United, welcomed 75,000 fans to Super Bowl LIII in a beautifully designed and environment-friendly facility dedicated to providing the ultimate fan experience. The HOK-designed $1.5 billion stadium opened in August 2017, creating a new architectural icon in the city’s impressive downtown skyline.

The extensive post-game coverage of the Super Bowl on ESPN’s NFL webpage featured a story by ESPN senior writer Dave Fleming, detailing an important and little discussed aspect of watching a game live… the quality of stadium restrooms.

In his article, Fleming quoted Mercedes-Benz Stadium GM Scott Jenkins as saying, “You add a restaurant or a walkway feature to the stadium, some people will use it, but everyone is going to use the restroom. So the functionality, the quantity, the aesthetics of your bathrooms is critical. It seems unremarkable to most people, but, trust me, you invite 70,000 people to your house and you get the bathrooms wrong – you've got a huge problem.”

As Fleming reported, another one of his sources, Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois and a board member of the American Restroom Association, described the restroom experience as one that “will make or break a fan’s experience at the Super Bowl”.

As Anthony put it, “That toilet seat is now just as important as your Super Bowl seat.”

ASI Group agrees with Jenkins and Anthony. That’s why the company worked diligently to ensure that the enjoyable experience of the tens of thousands of guests anticipated for each event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium extended all the way to the restroom.

ASI Group provided Phenolic Ultimate Privacy partitions that were custom designed to match the Atlanta Falcons’ deep red colour and provide guests with guaranteed privacy. The partitions play a large part in providing elegance and durability in 90 percent of stadium bathrooms. In the men’s washrooms, ASI also provided hundreds of urinal screens and stainless steel shelves to hold the guests’ cups and phones.

In the ESPN piece, Fleming was particularly descriptive of the Falcons’ ‘upscale’ bathroom:

“Finally, at owner Arthur Blank’s insistence, the Falcons have also covered every available bathroom wall with 50-inch TVs to keep fans connected to the game at all times. But it’s the color palette that remains the most distinctive trait of the Mercedes-Benz bathrooms. The immaculate gray speckled floors, shiny steel and deep red fixtures, black metallic speakers and unique gunmetal gray walls have transformed the typically institutional feel of the stadium bathroom into something you’d expect to see in an elegant restaurant or upscale hotel.”

As a leader in providing integrated building products for stadium design, this isn’t ASI Group’s first Super Bowl appearance. In addition to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, ASI Group’s products have been featured in some of the world’s most prominent stadiums including US Bank Stadium, AT&T Stadium, MetLife Stadium, Levi’s Stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium and Yankee Stadium.

ASI Group’s featured products at Mercedes-Benz Stadium:

  • ASI Accurate Partitions Phenolic Ultimate Privacy™ Partitions
  • ASI Global Partitions Phenolic Ultimate Privacy™ Partitions
  • ASI Stainless Steel Shelves
  • ASI Shower Seats

Reference:

Fleming, Dave. 2019. ‘The ugly — and, yes, slightly gross — truth of stadium bathrooms’. ESPN, February 1, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25894368/inside-taboo-bizarre-revealing-world-stadium-bathrooms-super-bowl-liii-nfl-2018