RNC
taking over Tampa Bay Times Forum for six weeks of convention prep
By
Richard Danielson
and Michael Van Sickler, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA
— Today is the first of many move-in days for the Republican National
Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.
For
the next six weeks, the convention will be the forum's sole tenant as it
undertakes a $20 million project to set the stage for Mitt Romney's nomination.
With an average of 200 to 300 workers on site any given day, there's a lot to
do.
The
Tampa Bay Storm arena football team played its last home game of the season at
the Times Forum on Saturday night, and the RNC officially takes over the venue
today. It will be a light day, with workers mainly pulling back retractable
seats to open up the arena floor and bringing equipment trailers to the site.
Starting
Monday, the pace picks up, with 20 tasks on the to-do list. Those include
starting to remove and store about 3,000 seats.
That
will help create room for:
•
The stage, about 58 feet wide and 40 feet deep, where Romney will give his
acceptance speech. It will go on the same side of the forum as the locker rooms,
which will be used for backstage operations and as green rooms.
•
A four-tiered platform for television cameras and news photographers.
•
Two news media platforms with slightly more than 300 seats, plus about 30
individual standup reporting positions for television broadcasters.
Early
tasks include installing the rigging, sound and lights for the convention,
scheduled for Aug. 27-30. The lights will not just illuminate the stage. That's
because the delegates make news, too, so the lighting on the convention floor
needs to be broadcast-quality.
Freeman,
the RNC's general contractor, also will transform the forum's luxury suites
into studios for TV networks and local news affiliates.
First,
a crew of about a dozen workers and two trucks take out everything they can —
stadium seats, artwork, LCD televisions, video monitors, granite-topped and
wood tables, bar stools, chairs, several 16-foot bars, even the doors — from
the 30 suites, said Chris Hunt, CEO and general counsel of First Class Moving
Systems.
It'll
take about a week for them to remove everything, including the ceiling tiles.
Convention organizers have learned they need to remove about a third of them to
make way for TV production crews.
"They
put lighting up in there," said convention chief operating officer Mike
Miller. "If you don't take them out, they will."
All
those things will be pad-wrapped or put in containers and covered with plastic,
then stored for two months in a climate-controlled storage facility.
The
suites' carpet and walls will be covered to protect them from being ripped or
scuffed. Then workers will build out the booths, including installing glass
fronts in a few cases. Broadcasters pay for the makeovers, which can cost more
than $34,000 per booth. (What the media pay Freeman is not part of the $20
million project estimate.)
"When
it's over, you have to quickly bring all that back in and restore that suite to
exactly what it was," Miller said.
•
• •
The
conversion also requires a lot of work behind the scenes.
Take
electricity. At its peak, the RNC's convention campus, which includes the forum
and the nearby Tampa Convention Center, could need up to 19 megawatts of
electricity — enough to power 7,600 homes.
That
estimate is based on the last night of the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia,
when usage peaked at more than 16 megawatts, plus a 20 percent reserve.
At
the forum, getting ready to meet the demand has entailed installing a
transformer — a permanent upgrade where the RNC and the forum split the cost —
to add 2 megawatts of capacity.
But
bringing the power into the building is only part of the challenge. Electricity
also must be routed to the right places.
That's
where MJM Electric of Tampa comes in.
"Everyone
in town wanted the job," MJM owner Mark Mazur said. Starting Monday, about
50 of his electricians will help install the wiring and cable for power, voice,
data and video. (He still is looking to hire about 15 people for the job.) By
comparison, when his company worked the Super Bowl in Tampa, he needed about 30
electricians for the prep work.
"We
will do many, many miles of wiring," Mazur said. "Tens of
miles."
After
the convention ends, about 50 electricians will work another two weeks to
remove everything.
MJM
is one of seven contractors that Freeman has hired for the conversion. Several,
such as First Class Moving Systems, are based in Tampa. Others are national
companies with operations in Tampa or, in one case, Orlando.
"Everything
that we can do that's available we do locally," said Greg Lane, Freeman's
national project director.
The
transformer upgrade is one of several improvements that already have taken
place. The convention and forum also have split the costs of hanging long
strips of sound-absorbing material to the ceiling of the venue to keep sound
from bouncing around too much. It's a problem the RNC has seen in the past.
"In
the Astrodome, they said you could shout at the 50-yard line, and somewhere in
there that sound was still echoing 20 seconds later," Miller said.
And
Bright House Networks, the RNC's official provider of video, high-speed data
and landline voice services, began in May to put in the 48 miles of data
cabling at the forum and convention center. "Where they're at, I don't know,
but they've been on site for some time," Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin
said.
A
total of 5,000 business-class phone lines also are being installed in the forum
and convention center, and Bright House has added 190 miles of single-strand
fiber to its existing cable network in downtown Tampa.
•
• •
Not
all of the work is taking place inside the forum.
Outside,
in the plaza, both the convention and Secret Service will put up large tents.
The Secret Service's tents will shelter the metal detectors it uses to screen
delegates, journalists and other conventioneers.
The
RNC's tents, plus some covered walkways, will shelter delegates from the rain
after they step off the charter buses that bring them from their hotels.
The
convention also will build a 1,500-foot, air-conditioned walkway from the forum
to the convention center. The walkway will be generally 15 feet wide, narrowing
to about 10 feet in spots.
In
addition to the forum, the RNC is scheduled to start work at the convention
center on Monday. There, Freeman will build out media work space for TV
networks, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, wire services and websites
worldwide.
But
that work will pause for five days later this month while the Florida Board of Bar
Examiners administers tests to 3,600 aspiring lawyers. City officials required
that work at the convention center stop for the Bar exam well before the RNC
ever put its staff on the ground in Tampa.
"Apparently
it takes pretty much the whole thing, and they don't want anybody even to
whisper anywhere near there," Miller said of the Bar exam. "But the
good thing is, you can do the media setup in four weeks. It'll be fine."
. Fast Facts
How much data?
Once
Bright House Networks finishes its upgrades for the Republican National
Convention, the resulting network will have the capacity to move 60 billion
bits of data per second. That's enough to:
•
Send 250,000 emails per second.
•
Send 37.5 million tweets per second.
•
Download an entire high-definition movie in a second.
•
Download 660 million songs over the course of the four-day convention.
Source:
Bright House Networks
[Last modified: Jul 14, 2012 11:24 PM]
