MORE THAN JUST A NAME

French Lick Resort Casino melds colorful history with technology.

French Lick Resort Casino in French Lick IN, a prominent Midwest destination with a colorful history and a colorful name, has been restored and expanded. The facilities are equipped with new AV installation resources, as well. We’ll be covering the audiovisual aspects in-depth. But first, let’s examine the venue’s namesake. It’s believed that early French traders found mineral springs in the locale now known as French Lick. Furthermore, it was obvious that area wildlife eagerly licked the deposited minerals on the surrounding rocks and earth.  Thus, the first real draw to the French Lick and West Baden destinations were the numerous natural mineral springs. In fact, the spring water was highly thought after for its purported medicinal qualities, claiming to cure ailments from alcoholism to paralysis to malaria. The primary spring at French Lick was named Pluto Spring, a reference to the Roman god of the underworld and the mythological River Styx.

Built in 1800s

The health resort that eventually would be known as French Lick Springs Hotel was built between 1840 and 1845. The hotel that would become nearby West Baden Springs Hotel was erected in 1850. Both of these lodgings were the destinations of choice in the early 20th century for celebrities, politicians, the rich and famous, and even the infamous. Throughout the 1920s, frequent noted guests included Al Capone, “Diamond” Jim Brady, Cole Porter, John Dillinger, Hopalong Cassidy, the Marx Brothers and Franklin D. Roosevelt What modern times celebrity has roots in French Lick? To find out, read on....

Then there’s this quirky fact: The French Lick Springs Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historical Places, lays claim to first serving tomato juice as a morning refreshment.  Legend has it that, in 1917, renowned chef Louis Perrin concocted the drink when he ran out of oranges for orange juice.

Cutting to the present, the French Lick Resort Casino is a $382 million historic restoration and casino development project that includes the French Lick Springs Hotel and the new French Lick Casino. In addition, the West Baden Springs Hotel will reopen.  For related colorful history, figures and facts, see the sidebar, “French Lick Resort Casino.”

AV Overview, Credits

On the AV side, Sensory Technologies, Indianapolis IN, provided AV integration for the Events Center and Casino. AV’s multi-faceted roles include paging, live sound reinforcement, background music and projection. The 109,000-square-foot Events Center has a 13,000-square-foot Windsor Grand Ballroom and several conference rooms. The Events Center is a new building attached to the old French Lick Hotel, which is being refurbished as part of initial Phase 1 of refurbishing the existing property.  The freestanding 84,000-square-foot casino features 42,000 square feet of Vegas-style gaming, all on one floor.  The venue’s AV consultant was D.L. Abrams Associates, Denver CO. We spoke with Bill Summitt, business development manager, and Eric Brown, design engineer, from Sensory Technologies. Credits at the install company also include Sensory’s crew, Derek Paquin, director of business development and Rosie Foulke, marketing manager. On the client side at French Lick Resort Casino, credits include Dyan Welsh, public relations manager, and interviewee Bob Cunningham, director of marketing services.  On the building side, construction was via Blue Sky and the architect was the Worth Group, Englewood, CO.

Challenges

Summitt talked about the excitement of working on this project. “The rich history surrounding French Lick, combined with the buzz generated by the new property, made this an amazing job for us. We were thrilled to be a part of it.” If there was one challenge along the way, it was the abbreviated timeframe.  “Although it was a pretty straightforward design, we had about three months to have it up and going by the first of November,” he said. “The challenge was working around many other deadlines and deliverables. We were installing speakers in the casino after some of the slot machines and poker tables already were in place. We worked closely with the contractors on the project to make sure installation was seamless and on time.  “Everything was operational from the time we got the contract to their hard opening.” Noting that all of this was a team effort, Summitt added, “Our guys put in a lot of long hours, so I want to make sure all our technical staff gets credit.”  “We were asked to work on the budget after winning the bid, without compromising on value. We changed the speakers to JBL. Sound quality was maintained, and we saved the project approximately $35,000.”

Events Center AV

In the three-story Events Center, the bottom floor houses resort property offices. The first floor is a big footprint of separate meeting rooms, multipurpose rooms and breakout rooms. Then the top, second floor has a large ballroom area used for headliner acts as well as meetings.  All equipment in the second floor and first floor is Crestron touchpanel accessed and controlled. In highlighting the spaces, the top floor’s multifunctional Windsor Grand Ballroom divides into three rooms separated by three movable walls. The ballroom has its own equipment rack to support each room, each of which contains a Da-Lite Senior Electrol 135"x240" screen. However, the three 4000 lumen Sanyo projectors are on portable carts; the projectors plug into Crestron floor connections. Similarly, each of the rooms has AV connections for VGA, video, S-video and microphones, as needed, in the floor and walls.  There is a variety of Shure wired and wireless mics available. There’s access to a five-disc CD player and a DVD recorder/S-video player, as well.  According to design engineer Eric Brown, the video and audio within each of those rooms are switched and maintained via the Crestron Quick-Media system. All the audio coming out of QuickMedia goes to a Biamp AudiaFLEX, which does the audio combining/de-combining. The processed audio feeds the QSC amplifiers and JBL 70 volt distributed, zoned system speakers.

Main Challenge

Summitt noted that the main challenge was mounting 120 ceiling speakers in the Windsor Grand Ballroom, which had a more than 20-foot ceiling with another 10 feet up to the deck.  “By the time you added the back box and everything, each speaker was 80 pounds,” he said. “And the ceiling grid wasn’t going to hold it. So each one of those speakers had to be mounted and secured from the deck. They’ve really got some audio fire power from the ceiling speakers!”   “Even though it’s in Indiana, this location is in a seismic area,” added Brown. “Quite a bit of consideration was taken into account how we supported the boxes in the ceiling as well as the three screens.”  Examples of the ballroom’s multi-functional uses include meetings, weddings and entertainment. For instance, for a singer and band, the ballroom would open into a small-sized concert hall. Summitt noted that, because there’s no permanent sound-reinforcement system in that area, either the venue would supply equipment or the act would attach a rider for specific gear. “Because it’s a fairly elaborate room, the client didn’t want a lot of permanently installed audio gear to distract from the aesthetics of the facility.” 

Six Additional Rooms

Moving downstairs to the first floor, there are six rooms served by Crestron-facilitated AV, which follow the top floor’s design scenario. Specifically, two rooms each can be divided into two. And, there are two standalone conference rooms. Three Sanyo 2200 lumen projectors can be carted from room to room. Although Quick-Media does all the switching control, there’s no Biamp AudiaFLEX path in this instance. Instead, the audio goes straight from QuickMedia to the QSC amplifiers, which feed JBL ceiling speakers. On either side of the projection screens on the first floor, there are left/right QSC stereo speakers.  Then there’s the background music system for the common area, which also doubles as an announcement system. It goes through an AudiaFLEX located in a rack on the first floor. For paging, there’s a mic input on the top floor and on the first floor at the concierge desk. A touchpanel at that desk allows the operator to choose from CD or different existing satellite sources for background music to the hallways around the ballroom and the meeting rooms on the top floor and first floor. The Events Center’s assisted listening system is via Williams Sound.

Casino AV

Brown and Summitt explained that casino audio is run through the PCbased Atlas Varizone system. Access is via a rackmounted touchscreen, which controls volume and source feeds to the floor’s 28 different audio zones, serving such areas as the valet station, slot machines, card tables, poker room, lounge and restrooms.  Source choices include different playlists from a music box system and feeds from 10 different satellites. “If there’s a big game on, the satellite feed can be pulled up and fed to the lounge area, so people can hear the game through the sound system,” said Brown.  Speakerwise, the office spaces and behind-the-scene areas, such as the hallways and employee dining rooms, are served by 50 Atlas speakers. Casino floor locations have JBLs, which include 158 Control 26CTs and 36 328CTs. “The 26CTs are pretty much throughout the floor,” said Brown.  “And the 328CTs are located down the middle of the floor, where there are a lot of card tables with a lot more ambient noise. So, there’s a little beefier speaker going through that area.” Although the casino speakers are for background music primarily, paging also is tied in, as needed.

Live Stage AV

There’s a small live stage in the lounge area with sound capabilities, as well as a projector and screen for entertainment and house announcements. First, let’s set the scene. The stage is in a half-circle bar area with video poker and other games. People congregate to play games, socialize and have a beverage of choice.  On the visual side, a Sanyo 4500 lumen projector fires on a Draper Rol-leramic 150-inch screen for such uses as viewing televised sports. “The Sanyo was added at the very last minute,” said Summitt. “We used a short-throw lens, so the projector is hidden above a bulkhead and out of sight.” Sound reinforcement for the stage is provided by a Mackie 16-channel mixing console and four Telex 350 watt powered speakers. This house sound system has a wide range of uses, from entertainment acts with live bands to casino prize announcements.  Shure wired and wireless mics are available for various uses.

Client’s Perspective

According to Bob Cunningham, director of marketing services at French Lick Resort Casino, the facility provided plasmas throughout the venue. These include 31 50-inch Philips and four 42-inch Sanyos. The monitors display satellite programming as well as digital signage created in-house via the Paltronics system. “We use Paltronics to create messages graphically,  either standalone, one-page or multi-page messages, and files,” explained Cunningham.  He gave a prime example of publi-cizing famed entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis’ appearance there in early February.  There was a message, along with Jerry Lee’s picture, scanned and filed in the Paltronics. “We can tweak it additionally with some of Paltronics’ software. Then, we can send the file to different screens. Because all monitors have IPO addresses, we just decide which plasmas we want the message playing on, on the floor. It’s very state of the art, very cool.”

Quality Background Music

“First off, anything that’s considered a big building nowadays likes to have background music playing to give some of the big spaces less of a tomblike feeling,” declared Cunningham.  “As people walk through the spaces— and that’s particularly so when you have a resort location or a hotel where people are constantly walking through those venues—you want to have nice, high-quality music from a playlist and music production standpoint. I think Sensory Technologies did a really nice job putting in the equipment in the Events Center based on our original specifications to them.”  Regarding the casino background music system, he noted that zone selection and combining originally “were done from a very manual standpoint, where you had to adjust those zone amplifiers. But Sensory Technologies came up with a point/click interface on an LCD screen in the equipment rack, where you can adjust amplifier volume and control zones. So that was a really positive add-on.” He pointed out that some speakers have been added to supplement the original specs. And, a screen and projector on the lounge stage wall were added so video and audio could be run in that area.

Tweaking, Alterations

He explained that, in the casino, “everything that we originally spec’d with them was installed and, outside of some minor tweaks, we’ve been very, very happy with the casino system.  And we’re happy with the Events Center.” As mentioned, he thinks Sensory did a nice job putting the equipment in the Events Center based on original specifications. However, changes are in the works at that venue. “We’re now working [with Sensory] to try to tweak some of the systems, add some equipment and change some of the technology, so we can get more flexibility out of the equipment.”  And now, the answer to the question of the local notable in these times. French Lick’s most famous citizen is basketball star Larry Bird, who was graduated from Springs Valley High School. He went on to become the NCAA Player of the Year at Indiana State University and a Hall of Famer with the NBA’s Boston Celtics.

SENSORY TECHNOLOGIES

Sensory Technologies is a videoconference and AV system solutions provider, with headquarters in Indianapolis IN and regional offices in Chicago IL, Dayton OH, Milwaukee WI and Fort Wayne IN. The AV company has the resources to deliver expert solutions to the Midwest, as well as nationally.  Sensory Technologies’ videoconference technology, AV systems integration and visual collaboration solutions increase its clients’ productivity and communication effectiveness. This is achieved by providing clients with a fully integrated solution consisting of systems design, equipment procurement, integration and onsite service support.  Sensory Technologies’ projects are visible in boardrooms, conference rooms, training centers, schools, universities, control centers, museums, hospitals and many other specialized venues.