It was a race to the finish as our crews juggled three overlapping university projects—with three tight timelines. Each scope of work was scheduled over the quiet summer months with students home on break. And all three venues needed to be complete before students returned to campus for the fall semester.
Northwestern Pick-Staiger
To kick of the summer, Flyhouse completed the next phase of the automation and motorization upgrades for the audio-visual systems at Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall (Evanston, IL). While the space was the most readily accessible for the summer, it was part of a large renovation on the concert venue with numerous trades working at once. With that in mind, Flyhouse started early and installed three new Flyhouse custom-built hoists assemblies, each designed for a different use. One hoist is rated at 750#WLL to lift a motorized projection screen, another is rated for 525#WLL to suspend their center speaker cluster, and the third hoist is designed to raise and lower two sets of delay speaker clusters. The control was easily integrated into the Flyhouse automation control system installed last summer when we upgraded the motorization with Flyhouse hoists rated for 2000#WLL for the acoustic cloud ceilings. The Flyhouse team carefully coordinated our work around the various other contractors also performing repairs and upgrades to the concert hall.
Harper College
We had just seven weeks to finish an extensive renovation at William Rainey Harper College Performing Arts Center (Palatine, IL). We started by removing much of the existing rigging from their forty line sets. We then replaced that equipment with all new hand line, lift lines, and idler assemblies. Four of their linesets were also upgraded to a Flyhouse Counterweight Assist Hoist, easily operated by a touchscreen control mounted on the lock rail. During the process, Flyhouse relocated the existing lock rail, moving it closer to provide better alignment for their counterweight system. This was no small feat as it involved welding in an additional 44 linear feet of steel box tube and angle assembly weighing over 1600 pounds. Another Flyhouse highlight was the design and fabrication of custom brackets needed to install a unique pit safety net that includes a conductor hatch. We finished this phase of the project by installing a new valance and main curtain. We look forward to returning over their winter break to complete the next phase of that project, motorizing and improving their fire curtain and release system.
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
With only eight weeks of fully accessible space, Flyhouse managed to complete several urgent and long overdue repairs at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. To make the best of the tight timeline Flyhouse started our work by designing and fabricating new hanging assemblies to integrate into their existing lines sets for their orchestra shell ceilings. At the same time, another Flyhouse team repaired their 15-19’ high custom arbors re-purposing unused ones currently onsite, while repairing several more. Once that work was completed, our crews moved onto replacing all of their loft blocks with custom new sheaves and idler pulleys. With close to 400 in total, it’s nearly double what you find in most theaters.
The largest, and heaviest, tasks were still to come. The next portion of work involved the venue’s five lighting bridges, with varying capacities of 5,000-20,000 pounds. Our focus for the last phase of our timeline at IU was on lighting bridge 5: returning it to completely operational status and in full compliance with current industry standards. This required the installation of a new mayline system to accommodate the two arbors running separately on different tracks without connection between them. These arbors were not originally secured together because of structural steel that interrupted the travel of the arbors at various levels. By the end of the summer, Flyhouse was able to provide the new solution and install one of our Flyhouse custom fabricated hoists to allow the music school to have all lighting bridges available for use. Flyhouse crew will be back again next summer break to continue the renovations on the remainder of these massive lighting bridges. That’s how we fly!
The winner?
Students and audiences at all three venues, who get to enjoy the new spaces this fall and for years to come.
