Wellfield Botanic Gardens is a 36-acre property known as a regional attraction and gateway to growing downtown Elkhart, Indiana. The gardens host over 75,000 visitors annually. After several years of facility expansions, the final new additions to the gardens included a public boardwalk, a visitor center and a 500-person open-air mass timber events pavilion.

The Wellfield Visitors Center project comprised approximately 12,000 square feet and the Wellfield Pavilion comprised approximately 6,000 square feet. The Pavilion was designated for an assembly occupancy classification with a maximum planned occupancy warranting it being designed as a Risk Category III structure.

The new additions to the gardens included a public boardwalk, visitor center and a 500-person open-air mass timber events pavilion.

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 structural 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 Visitors Center and for an open structure for the Pavilion.

Renderings by Arkos Design