Frost Engineering partnered with Arkos Design to bring the complete vision of the Wellfield Botanic Gardens to life. Known as a regional attraction and gateway to growing downtown Elkhart, the gardens host over 75,000 visitors annually. This project included a public boardwalk, visitor center and a 500-person open-air pavilion for special events throughout the year.

The Wellfield Visitor’s Center comprised approximately 12,000 sq. ft. and the Wellfield Pavilion comprised approximately 6,000 sq. ft. The Pavilion was designated for an assembly occupancy classification with a maximum planned occupancy warranting it being designed as a Risk Category III structure. Total project time was estimated at approximately two years to completion. The structures consisted of reinforced concrete footings, slabs on grade, hot-rolled steel framing with diagonally braced connections, reinforced CMU bearing and shear walls, and mass timber roof framing. Frost was the engineer of record for this project and directed all major design decisions, including wind load generation for uniquely shaped and multi-layered roof planes on the Visitor’s Center and for an open structure for the Pavilion. Frost directed and/or reviewed the design of all of the aforementioned structural material components in compliance with the Indiana Building Code and the relevant provisions of the IBC, ASCE 7, ACI 318, AISC 360, TMS 402/602, NCMA TEK, and NDS.