# New/newer venue in New York/New Jersey, etc. Pix?



## len (May 19, 2013)

I read somewhere (here or LightNetwork probably) about some new or rehabbed venue in the New York area. Apparently, they can drive trailers into the basement, right onto an elevator, and up or down onto the show floor. Or something. Anyone have some pix? Video?


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## soundman (May 19, 2013)

Are you thinking of the Barclay Center in Brooklyn? I haven't giged there yet but I haven't heard good things about it. Here is a video that shows what the inside looks like. WonkaVision : Barclays Center Loading Dock - YouTube

Here is an article about the system Elevator Up! | Pollstar

I talked to some people that have stopped their on tour and they don't like it. I guess there is some VIP parking near the turntable and one of the VIPs car was half on the turntable and half on the concrete. They had to wait for the VIP to move their car or use a forklift to start load out. I also heard takes so long to swap a truck you want to do two at once so there is some waiting and dancing going on to get the right truck at the right dock at the right time. Not sure how much room is on the event level for case storage.


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## rochem (May 19, 2013)

Yup, that's at Barclays. It's pretty impressive, except when the elevator breaks down, which happened to a friend of mine a few months back.

I've heard the same mutterings as soundman. I admire the architects for coming up with a clever way to save space, but it's not very efficient for large shows.


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## SteveB (May 20, 2013)

rochem said:


> Yup, that's at Barclays. It's pretty impressive, except when the elevator breaks down, which happened to a friend of mine a few months back.
> 
> I've heard the same mutterings as soundman. I admire the architects for coming up with a clever way to save space, but it's not very efficient for large shows.



It wasn't a space saving issue, it was a no space issue. The facility was shoe-horned into a site on top of the LIRR commuter rail station, thus had no available space in a very congested neighborhood to allow a more spacious load-in setup. Everybody involved knew from the get go that the 2 truck-in-the-elevator-on-the-turntable approach was going to slow things down. No choice though. 

And the place has been going like gang busters. They had already grabbed the NJ Nets basketball team prior to construction, then grabbed the Islanders pro hockey team after, plus the press has been positive about the space as a concert venue, being cheaper then the Garden due to a better contract with the unions. So the IA Local 4 folks are very, very busy and I've lost folks on our crew to Local 4, for the first time in decades.


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## len (May 20, 2013)

Looks like a novel way (in that no one has used it in years) to overcome some site limitations. Coming from a family of railfans, and living near the old Aurora Roundhouse I have an appreciation for things that can move other big things.


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## JohnD (May 22, 2013)

How about a topic veer to other venues with load in issues. I remember the Scope arena in Norfolk, VA, according to the local hands, the original plan had the loading dock near the street, but somehow the arena plan got flipped so it shared a loading pavilion with the other venues in the complex, so getting trucks to the loading dock was very difficult.
I also remember a university fieldhouse somewhere in the western part of the country that was built like an inverted pyramid. From the street it looked like a very large one story building, they had a loading area with big doors and a wide ramp down to the bottom, unfortunately there was a limited height clearance, so the venue would borrow some pickup trucks and you would have to transfer from truck to pickup and the pickup would back down the ramp.


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## len (May 22, 2013)

The few venues outside Illinois I've been at were relatively decent. The Aragon in Chicago is crazy, in that you back the trailer down the alley (a feat in itself given the street access), build an offload area from portable staging, then a forklift picks up the cases and raises them to the show floor, 20 feet above street level. But it was built at a time before semi-trailers. And you have to hope the guy who owns the forklift remembers to show up. 

Most of the bad load ins I deal with are at standalone banquet halls, with no dock, no access, and a venue staff that is pissed that you need more than 10 minutes to move in and set up, and even more so when you're striking.


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## BillConnerFASTC (May 22, 2013)

I think Grady Gammage wins - steep and spiral ramps.


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## ruinexplorer (May 22, 2013)

BillConnerASTC said:


> I think Grady Gammage wins - steep and spiral ramps.



I think that goes pretty much for all Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings.


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## Call911 (May 22, 2013)

len said:


> The few venues outside Illinois I've been at were relatively decent. The Aragon in Chicago is crazy, in that you back the trailer down the alley (a feat in itself given the street access), build an offload area from portable staging, then a forklift picks up the cases and raises them to the show floor, 20 feet above street level. But it was built at a time before semi-trailers. And you have to hope the guy who owns the forklift remembers to show up.
> 
> Most of the bad load ins I deal with are at standalone banquet halls, with no dock, no access, and a venue staff that is pissed that you need more than 10 minutes to move in and set up, and even more so when you're striking.



Banquet halls are the worst. I can't tell you how many times my "loading dock" is the kitchen dock where the unload the food trucks into the freezer. I don't want to walk 100' through a kitchen where there is open food being prepared and cooked. If I was eating that food I wouldn't want to know that the tech crew just brought portable staging, racks, etc loaded with dirt and dust bunnies right past my food being cooked.


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## SteveB (May 23, 2013)

Brand new venue on Long Island at Molloy College - the Madison Theate, a 550 seat theater with the stage about 20 ft below grade. Opened in late 2011 but only started getting used last year when they started a performing arts series.

The load in is thru an 8x8 ft door at street level, so no dock. Then either an immediate left and down 2 flights of stairs, or straight for 20 ft to a 180 degree turn and into an 12x8x8 'ish elevator to stage level. The theater has a 40ft prosc. opening with maybe 10ft wing space L&R. I looked in on a tour of Fiddler there a few weeks back, 2x53 footers, how they got all that stuff downstairs is a mystery and I'm uncertain that any pipe over 15ft can make the bend at the stairs. Not sure what they do with large flats, etc...

My thought on seeing the good size stage (even with no wing space and no real backstage storage area's either), was you can get a good sized tour in here, IF you can get in and out of the theater, but will never make any money on it with only 550 seats, no matter how many shows you do,

Gotta be a b _ _ _h to work in, though as a new arts series the management will hopefully learn over time that the big shows cost in terms of labor due to the poor facility design and maybe not book them.


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## jwolfkill (May 28, 2013)

I worked at the O'Connell Center on the University of Florida campus some years ago (OK, 20 years ago) when it still had the "inflatable" fabric roof. Large roll-up doors cannot be left open for very long in such buildings or the interior air pressure will fall enough to "deflate" the roof. The architects apparently attempted to address this issue by building a large hallway between the arena floor and the loading dock that could function as a truck-sized airlock - a roll-up door at either end, with only one open at a time, the idea being that a truck backs into the hallway, the exterior door is closed, the interior door is opened, and the truck is unloaded directly onto the arena floor. The doors had enough clearance for a standard tractor-trailer rig, measured from the floor to the bottom of the door in the "up" position. However, to get in the exterior door, trucks would have to back up a ramp that ended about 6-8 feet from the door. Because the trailer wheels would still be on the ramp when the back end of the trailer reached the door, the back end of the trailer would be sticking up so that the vertical distance from the floor to the top of the trailer would be several inches more than the clearance from the floor to the bottom of the rolled-up door. D'oh!

In light of this design fail, the load-in procedure worked like this: (1) back a truck up to the standard dock bay next to the ramp, (2) open the 7-foot roll-up door that served this bay and opened into the same hallway as the bigger door, (3) unload as fast as possible, queueing up the gear in the hallway, (4) close the loading dock door, (5) open the interior roll-up door and push all the gear onto the arena floor, (6) check the air pressure gauge and, if necessary, wait until it rose enough to open the exterior door again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Load-out was the reverse. It was a real pain with more than two or three trucks.


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## derekleffew (Jul 25, 2013)

From http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/nyregion/madison-square-garden-is-told-to-move.html?_r=1& :

> The New York City Council notified the arena [Madison Square Garden] that it has 10 years to vacate its 45-year-old premises and find a new home, the Garden’s fifth since it opened in 1879.



And directly pertinent to this thread, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/barclays-center-tops-american-ticket-sales-list/?_r=0 :

> Barclays Center, the arena in Brooklyn that has challenged Madison Square Garden in the New York City market, sold more tickets than any other arena in the United States for the first six months of the year, and led the country in gross ticket sales for concerts and family shows as well, according to tallies published this week in _Billboard_ and _Pollstar_ magazines.


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## Footer (Jul 25, 2013)

derekleffew said:


> From http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/nyregion/madison-square-garden-is-told-to-move.html?_r=1& :
> 
> 
> And directly pertinent to this thread, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/barclays-center-tops-american-ticket-sales-list/?_r=0 :



I like that it is written in a way that you would expect them to find a new home by looking on craigslist.


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## SteveB (Jul 25, 2013)

There has been talk for decades of a need to deal with the Penn Station problem. They pulled down a gorgeous and functional train station back in in the 60''s, moved the "Garden" (which had been at Madison Square a few blocks south) to this site and created a God-awful AMTRAK and commuter rail station underneath the arena that quickly became congested and non-functional. Then they wanted to take the defunct post office, a block west, and turn that into the train station (it sits on top of the railroad tracks), but there is/was no federal funding to make it happen. As well the commuters objected to walking 2 more blocks west and the subway infrastructure didn't support the new location very well. 

So now they are essentially telling the operator of the Garden - Cablevison (cable TV provider in NYC and Long Island/Westchester) that they "may" be required to vacate. This would imply the Garden will come down and a new railroad station will take it's place. I might of once said No Way, as the Garden is a huge money maker. With Barclays just being a monumental success, I'm no longer so certain. I do know that a re-built railroad station at the current location makes more sense, especially and with Barclays being an example, you can put an arena anywhere. Not so with trains.


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## ruinexplorer (Jul 26, 2013)

Well, they do need to be prepared for the future.


Or is that Futurama?


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## Footer (Jul 26, 2013)

Maybe this will bring back the idea of the "west side stadium".


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## len (Jul 30, 2013)

Another side of the Barclay's Center. Amazon.com: Battle for Brooklyn: Artists not provided, Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley: Movies & TV


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## soundman (Oct 20, 2013)

I just gigged at the Barclay Center a week or so ago. We had 12 trucks with us. The elevators gave us no problems. I think load out was only 10-15 minutes longer than normal. Certainly quicker than a no dock day. There are two separate elevators that can each handle a single truck. In addition to the four dock height docks there is parking underground for at least two if not three 53' trailers that can be forked into. I guess its popular to put your stage trucks there because its a short push or fork drive to the FOH vom and they can be loaded in a short time with a fork. Moderate storage backstage and a+ support / dressing rooms. Power for days on both sides of the stage and throughout the venue. 100 amp and 200 amp 3/0 drops anywhere you could possible think of. Not sure how many are feed from the same transformer but for award shows and corporate gigs they must be very handy. Local 4 treated us right, any strict rules were made clear to us at the start of the day and the rest was easy going. 

The cons are the roof is sloped in both directions so calling points can be a bit tricky. Also there is only one elevator to go from the event level to street level where the buses are that is shared with the public going between street level and another floor once doors are open. Not very convenient when you want to quick grab your shower bag once the opener starts.


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