2008 Best Hospitality/Restaurant AV Project
Stats is the kind of stylist restaurant you might expect to see in New York, L.A., or Miami?but maybe not Atlanta.
AV INTEGRATORARCHITECT
The restaurant includes a 15-zone audio system designed to compensate for ambient noise. Biamp processing and audio-sensing mics help adjust loudspeaker volume as necessary.
Credit: James Klotz Photography
STATS’ custom-designed, 33-foot U-shaped color ticker display offers continuous news, statistics, and financial data via a programmable, dedicated Internet connection.
Credit: James Klotz Photography
STATS IS THE KIND OF STYLISH RESTAURANT YOU MIGHT EXPECT TO SEE IN New York, L.A., or Miami—but maybe not Atlanta. And with its sleek look, private VIP rooms, and chic ambiance (even the rest rooms have high-tech themes), you definitely wouldn’t expect it to be a sports bar. But it is, and the cool factor is due largely to the AV design created and installed by technicians from AVI-SPL, who worked six to seven days a week, 14 hours a day, for about a month.
The wild card was the building itself, an 80-year-old brick building redesigned into the nightclub-style STATS Food Play. “I think they gutted the place and started over,” says Bill Smedley, project engineer for AVI-SPL. “But they didn’t plan for such a high-end AV system.” Two days before the restaurant’s grand opening, equipment and video racks still weren’t finished and 150 technicians were working through the night. “I think there were 115 coax terminations that had to be made. It was next to impossible to pull off.”
Power conditioning helped. The team installed a Furman AC-215 120-volt conditioner for each of the 72 displays in the 15,000-square-foot building, plus various SurgeX surge eliminators and power conditioners to save the electrician from completely rewiring the building. Today, the displays are just the beginning. In addition, two Projection Design F30 6,500-lumen projectors are stacked vertically and project the restaurant logo and HD video onto an 8-by-12-foot Da-Lite 74640C wraparound screen, while a Rise Displays ticker runs above one of the five bars. “That whole ticker/ TV display was custom fabricated on the fly,” says Smedley. Video comes from various sources, including 21 satellite receivers, a Blu-ray disc player, and cameras throughout the venue, as well as in the restaurant’s radio broadcast booth. In a rooftop area, Sun Brite TV 4600HD all-weather LCDs keep guests in on the action.
The 15-zone audio system is designed to overcome ambient crowd noise. Using a Biamp processing system, audio sensing microphones automatically adjust the loudspeakers’ volume to compensate for the ambient noise, while a Crestron system maintains three levels of control for wait staff, management, and maintenance technicians. “It really is a complex system when you think about the overall control aspects, but by the time we had it done, it was almost transparent,” says Smedley.
AVI-SPL, Tampa, Fla. (completed by the former AVI)
ASD, Atlanta
