Logic Systems has partnered with Harrington Hoists to modify an existing trolley motor for The Factory, a two storey 52,000 sq ft indoor music venue, with capacity for up to 3,000 guests in St. Louis, United States.

All four PA hoists, as well as hoists for the mid-stage and up-stage lighting trusses are on trolley motors, so they can be trolleyed out of the way of touring production without having to take them down and store them. 

Enhancing the experience is a flexible lighting rig featuring Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and Strike fixtures supplied by Logic Systems, which also installed audio, video, and rigging systems at The Factory.

“Doing this project as a ground-up design allowed for lots of cool options that wouldn’t necessarily be possible on a retrofit of an existing space,” said Chip Self, owner, Logic Systems. “One of my main design goals was to make the systems as flexible as possible.

“As a Road House, we will host visiting bands that sometimes want to use their own gear, but there’s very limited space to store the house PA and lighting when that happens. I worked with Harrington Hoists to modify an existing trolley motor so that it can be operated from a traditional production style hoist controller, and outfitted them with P14 connections.

“Since it was new construction, I was able to design the rigging steel to have oversized beams and extra capacity to allow this without compromising capacity for the tour systems.”

The trolley motors and hoists at The Factory operate from Applied Electronics hoist controllers. Light Source drape tracks were used to create sliding cable picks for the motor cables, so they can travel upstage-downstage with the trolley motors.

“There’s genuinely not a bad seat in the house, as there are no obstructions like poles or columns anywhere in the audience area,” said Self. “Conduits and fibre were installed by another vendor to a few camera locations, all running back to a video truck patch panel to allow for bringing in a camera package to film or stream concerts.”

Regarding the lighting system he added: “We tested multiple fixtures in the space, and with the input of venue management to determine what worked best, both in terms of performance and budget.

“I wanted to position our FOH (Front of House) truss off the show grid so it’s not in the way of touring systems. Because it’s on roof trusses instead of the show grid, I had to pay careful attention to weight. The Chauvet units were ideally suited for this. Not only are they compact, they’re extremely versatile and pack a lot of punch.”

A collection of eight Rogue R3X Wash, 20 Maverick Force S Spot, 12 Rogue R2 Wash and nine Strike 4 fixtures were selected for the project. The mid-stage and upstage trusses each have eight Force S Spots, six Rogue R2 Washes and three Strike 4 Units.

“There was a huge amount of design intent and attention put into making the entire audience space a great seat, and lighting was a big part of it,” said Self, who worked alongside Brian Carp, chief operating officer, The Factory and Kris Trgovich, project manager, Logic Systems.

“This was the product of hard work an exceptional team effort,” he said, “that, plus a lot of forward-looking vision by a group of optimistic people will make things happen every time, even during a pandemic.”

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