ARENA Copyright Lighting &Sound America February 2018 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html Motor City Modern n a g i h c i M f o t n e m p o l e v e D a i p m y l O : o t o h P 52 • February 2018 • Lighting &Sound America Little Caesars Arena is orking under Christopher Ilitch’s leader - uniquely suited for both ship, our team set out to build the “Wgreatest arena in the world,” notes sports and entertainment Peter Skorich, VP of entertainment services at Olympia Entertainment, the group that manages the sports and By: Sharon Stancavage entertainment aspect of Detroit-based Little Caesars Arena. The venue will serve as the home of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team and Detroit Pistons basketball team; it will also provide the city with a major new venue for concert touring and other entertainment events. Olympia Entertainment is an Ilitch company, one of a mul - titude of businesses founded or purchased by [the late] Mike and/or Marian Ilitch. The Ilitch family has been involved with the revitalization of Detroit for decades. “You have to give the credit to Chris Ilitch. The vision these guys have for the city is absolutely amazing, and they are really making a difference,” notes Eric Wade, of Crossfade Design, LLC, based in New Albany, Indiana; the firm han - dled the entertainment lighting/projection design at Little Caesars Arena. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • February 2018 • 53 ARENA Projection content was supplied by a variety of sources, including Crossfade Design and Dangers, Inc. A host of firms were involved in the creation of Little Arena lighting Caesars Arena, including the Kansas City office of HOK, Entertainment lighting for hockey and basketball games the global design, architecture, engineering, and planning has been a trend for a while, and when Wade entered dis - firm; architectural lighting designers Illuminating Concepts, cussions with the LCA team, everything was on the table: located in Farmington Hills, Michigan; Minneapolis-based “We spent a lot of time and effort creating renderings and Parsons Technologies; Motor City Electric, based in motion ideas, so they could see things actually working.” Detroit; and many more. Crossfade Design was tapped for Determining the location of the instruments, which were the entertainment elements inside the arena. Wade was going to be installed on permanent trusses, also took the principal designer, with Jason Robinson and Michael some time. “HOK spent a lot of time on sightline studies,” Nevitt also serving as designers. “When Crossfade Design Wade reveals. “At the lighting booth, you’re almost even works on a project, we tend to all contribute to it in some with the lights; it’s right up at the low steel, and there are way,” Nevitt says. seats that go up higher than us. You really have to be Over the course of the project, Wade—and Crossfade’s careful what you’re putting in and where you’re putting it, role—changed. “I was brought into this about three years because you can’t block any seats. ago by Illuminating Concepts,” he says. “Basically, they “We have two 140' side trusses, two 40' end trusses, wanted me to take care of performance lighting and video and [four] corner trusses; that makes eight. We also have projection. They brought us in, initially, as extreme corner trusses [40'], which makes 12. In total, consultants/designers, and they hired me to design the there are 13, because we boxed in the scoreboard, which overall lighting.” we count as one truss. That’s all permanent and it never leaves.” The product chosen is 20.5" by 20.5" box truss by 54 • February 2018 • Lighting &Sound America Midland, Texas-based Tomcat. notes, “The Axiom is a good hybrid light, and it works just The venue’s trim height of 103' helped determine some fine for the situation. So now we have a bunch of Axioms of Wade’s fixture decisions: “In some shots, if you’re going [69] in there as well. After that, we added [60] Martin MAC from one end of the ice to the other, there could be a 300' - Quantum washes.” The lighting fixtures were specified by to-400' shot, so the instruments had to be extremely Crossfade Design and purchased from multiple lighting bright,” he says. vendors through Caniff Electric Supply in conjunction with For a long-throw fixture, Wade says, “We went with the Illuminating Concepts. [Robe] BMFL Blade; it was the only fixture at the time that The venue also features 12 Lycian 1295 ELT followspots, would even come close to having the horsepower we sourced through Upstaging, located in DeKalb, Illinois. needed. We started with 70-something units, but the “There are four spotlights at the front of house, three along design changed over time, so we now have 34.” The each side, and two in the rear,” explains Upstaging’s Mike BMFL Blades are located on the side and end trusses over Hosp. The firm also provided “two Limpet E5 [multifunction the ice. height safety systems], so the venue would be able to Working with the BMFL Blades are additional instru - repair and replace any broken lighting and video gear. We ments from Robe. “We have trusses in the high corner bal - mounted them on to a single [Gallagher Staging] Mini G cony, way up in the corner of the building,” Wade says. “I Block for ease of setup.” loaded them with Robe BMFL WashBeams. It’s pretty The arena’s entertainment lighting can be used as an much as bright as the BMFL—if not brighter—because it audience lighting package for visiting concert tours, Wade has fewer things happening in it. The punch of those lights says: “It’s valuable for a show coming in, because they’re is amazing. We get that 400' or 500' throw from the cor - not running into that expense of renting extra gear for an ners with the beam.” There are 20 WashBeams in the far audience package.” corner trusses. Control of the lighting rig is via three MA Lighting Wade also wanted a hybrid fixture, and originally speci - grandMA2 consoles. “It was a long project, and took a fied the Claypaky Mythos 2. At one point, when he was long time to put it together, so we had a lot of different less involved in day-to-day decisions, the Mythos 2 was programmers involved,” Wade says. “Eric Marchwinski changed to the Martin by Harman MAC Axiom Hybrid. He was in the building, as were Tyler Roach, Brent Sandrock, g n i m e l F k c a J : s o t o h P Barco HDF-W30LP Flex projectors are used in the mezzanine display as well as in the arena proper. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • February 2018 • 55 ARENA Jason Winfree, and others. You call them programmers, but, to me, these guys can do it all; they’re designers in their own right.” Other programmers who worked on content for the preshow, period breaks, and more include Sam Brown, Chris Lose, Joe Bay, Kevin Lawson, Brandon Wade, Aaron Wade, and Drew Hornback. Once Crossfade Design’s initial design, setup, and program - ming was complete, the system was handed off to Robert Wertheimer, of Spectacle Lighting Design, who handles the day-to-day operation for Olympia Entertainment and Little Caesars Arena. Arena rigging ARS Entertainment Rigging, based in Atlanta, handled the installation of the in-house automated sports and event lighting package. “It was a pretty complicated job,” says Dave Gittens, president of ARS. “That being said, ARS is uniquely qualified for a job like this in that we are equally capable of working in construction or production; not many companies can straddle that line. This job is a prime example of how those two completely different worlds can sometimes meet in the middle. We know what the designer wants when the dust clears and it’s show - time—but navigating through a construction site with a general contractor and working alongside other construc - tion trades has no resemblance at all to a standard live event load-in.” The rigging system, says Neil Montour, director of automation at ARS, “consists of 28 variable-speed hoists; eight can reach speeds up to 64fpm and 20 can reach 32fpm. The hoists are located over the hockey ice floor, with an additional eight fixed-speed hoists; with a speed of 16fpm, these hoists support trusses over the seating area. The variable-speed hoists have VFD [variable fre - quency drive] cabinets at each location, built by ZFX in Louisville; they control the hoist movement and receive load cell data, which is read by the control console. All hoists are Columbus McKinnon Next Generation Lodestars, with ARS spec modifications; RAYNOK soft - ware [manufactured by Niscon, Inc.] runs the front-end control. We also had truss and beam clamps custom-fab - ricated by Athletic Performance Rigging, in Tiffin, Ohio. Since it was new construction, the installation of the vari - ous components had to be broken up at different times, adding to the challenge of getting the right people in place n to finish on time.” a g i h c i M f o Arena projection t n e For projecting onto the ice, Wade says, “We went with a m p o l e Barco [HDF-W30LP Flex, a three-chip DLP laser phosphor v e D projector]. It wasn’t even out yet when we put that in the source; I think it’s 30,000 hours of laser life, and it’s going a i p m spec.