City of Gresham

The City of Gresham sits just east of Portland, Oregon. With 112,000 residents, Gresham is the state’s fourth largest city and the Portland metro region’s second largest city. 

As Gresham continues to grow, the city has upgraded and expanded its facilities for use by government officials, police and fire departments, and residents from the community. Part of these improvements include upgrading AV systems throughout its buildings, starting with City Hall.

Brian Crabb, Facilities Technician for the City of Gresham, is responsible for maintenance of all city buildings, including overseeing all AV needs. He explains what their goal was for improving the city’s meeting rooms.

“We have 23 buildings throughout the city, used by many different departments and personnel who have varying degrees of experience using AV technology. The setup and interface in conference rooms need to be simple and intuitive, with minimal instructions — something that members of the community could come in and use right away,” explained Crabb. 

The Gresham facilities team wanted to create a level of standardization across all conference rooms and facilities, so every AV system and interface would become relatively familiar and easy to use. They also wanted a system that didn’t require overly intricate AV knowledge, so they could install the system themselves for future projects. When the team evaluated their options, they called the Portland telecommunications and security consulting firm NIS Consulting for help. 

Diane Forbes, the Chief Operations Officer for NIS, came in to advise Crabb and the Gresham team. “The team was really interested in understanding what was available on the market; they were open to looking at all options.”

NIS visited Gresham City Hall to understand the team’s needs and pain points. In particular, they looked at concerns the team had with larger spaces, and how to meet the need of larger spaces while addressing the needs of different types of users.

“NIS provides recommendations on design, standardization, and what’s the expectation of a system for a conference room based on size,” said Crabb. “They were pivotal in helping us with those aspects.” 

“The Leviton system was so straightforward and simple enough to grasp, install  and maintain.”

Forbes proposed evaluating “good, better, and best” AV system options for small to large conference spaces. Each category offers different levels of features and benefits, but also bring different levels of complexity and cost to an AV system. Having worked with Leviton before on school AV projects, she recommended that the team get a demonstration of Leviton IT/AV solutions. 

Justin Parker, a specification engineer with Leviton Network Solutions, met with Forbes and the Gresham team at the nearby Anixter Portland distribution offices to offer a demonstration. The Anixter offices use Leviton IT/AV solutions in both large and small conference rooms.

“Justin was instrumental in helping us. He was able to come in and explain Leviton’s IT/AV products, show how they’re installed, and answer any questions — and the demos worked as advertised,” said Forbes. 

Leviton offered AV systems in each of the “good, better, and best” levels that were evaluated. After looking at their options, the team decided they didn’t have need for more complex solutions and chose Leviton’s IT/AV Control System with 8-Button Control Panel, Autoswitching Wallplate, and HDBaseT Receiver. 

“Because the design with the Leviton system was so straightforward and simple enough to grasp, install and maintain, the Gresham team was able to take it from there and implement it,” said Forbes. 

Every updated conference space uses the Leviton HDBaseT Autoswitching Wallplate to connect, switch and extend two HDMI and one VGA source to displays or projectors, all over categoryrated cable. And each area includes an 8-button Control Panel to control the Autoswitching Wallplate and provide volume and power controls for the projector or monitor. The control panel and Autoswitching Wallplate are powered through the HDBaseT Receiver, using Power over HDBaseT (PoH). All of the Gresham installations use Category 6 cabling from the control panel to the extender wallplate and to the  HDBaseT Receiver near the projector or display.

Outfitting the main conference hall

Originally planned as several small conference rooms, the city’s conference center morphed into a main conference hall that can act as one large room or be divided into three smaller conference rooms. The area needed to be flexible, as all kinds of people use the conference center, including city hall employees, the police department, fire department, schools, and community organizations.

The conference hall AV system includes four projectors, which can run all together or split for different uses. Each partitioned room has its own independent volume controls, but the audio can be switched to cover all three rooms or two of the three rooms. 

Justin Parker designed the room to use the Leviton OmniTouch 7 Touchscreen Control Panel to manage AV between the rooms, and a Leviton Hi-Fi Four Zone, Four Source Amplifier. Gresham hired local certified installer Nexus Integration for wiring, hookups, and custom configuring the touchpad. 

Simple to install, simple to use

Crabb and the Gresham facilities team have been satisfied with the new AV systems. “The Leviton system is much better than what we had before,” said Crabb. “It’s been great for ease of use, and there’s very little instruction required to get up and running. Once new users see how easy it is, they’re impressed.”  

“Once new users see how easy it is, they’re impressed.”

In the near future, the Leviton 8-button setup will be installed as part of several mid-size conference room remodels. And moving forward, Crabb and the team will add the Leviton systems wherever there’s a new need.

Learn more about the solutions used in this case study at Leviton.com/ITAV(se abre en una pestaña nueva).