A steelworker welds away on new additions to the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky. (Photo courtesy of Rupp Arena)
According to Bill Owen, president and CEO of the Lexington Center Corporation, the first performers at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., didn’t need much when it came to audio equipment.
“When Rupp was first opened in 1976, Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty brought a guitar, and a little bit of production equipment hung from the ceiling,” Owen said. Performers were helped even more by having the stages in the same general vicinity at the time, making for an environment that did not need much in the way of amplification.
Today’s shows, however, need a lot more. From runways to large-scale festival seating and mosh pits for the livelier shows, Owen called the current live-event terrain “a different environment that an arena has to address.”
An initiative to address substantial renovations needed at the Rupp Arena came about toward the beginning of the decade, according to Owen. 2014 saw the $15 million, two-year project go on hold until 2016, during which audiovisual technology upgrades have moved forward. All video production equipment was replaced in September and October, 2015, which saw an upgrade to a 16 by 9 aspect ratio with high definition production equipment. Fifteen-year-old video screens were replaced as well, and an upper arena ribbon facia was installed. LED digital screens, made by Daktronics, also replaced static message boards in the lower vomitories.
Owen said the new planned sound system, made by L-Acoustics, will likely be finished by the end of the year, but possibly in the first or second quarter of 2017. “Our sound system was 39 years old,” said Owen, which “still performed fairly well, but was just old technology.”
Most recently, heavy-duty ironwork has been made to the facility to support a center-hung video scoreboard array, which was delivered Aug. 30. The new array stands at 34 feet wide by 28 feet tall, and weighs in at 44,000 pounds, which requires significant support. “We’ve been doing a substantial amount of steel upgrades in the ceiling,” said Owen, with extensions made to the rigging grid 120 feet down stage, and support structures that added 50,000 pounds to the ceiling.
Other changes have concentrated on making work for production teams easier. Camera platform and press ops will be installed on the stage-left side to match the same elements that were installed on the stage-right side in 2003. “We’re expanding and improving both the broadcast and the house camera operator positions with everything hard-wired in,” Owen said, “so basically a production truck just has to come and plug in on the loading dock.”
After closing for the summer, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey presents Circus Xtreme performed at Rupp Sept. 9-11. While the site still has a lot of work left to do, including WiFi upgrades on the horizon, Owen was proud of the presence that Rupp Arena still continues to improve upon after so many years of operation.
“The first event in Rupp Arena was Lawrence Welk in October of 1976,” said Owen. “We’re going into our 40th year, and are still a force after 40 years.”
Interviewed for this article: Bill Owen, (859) 233-4567