CCS Goes All-in at Route 66 Casino

CCS Presentation Systems, a 21-year-old integration firm that calls itself “the Southwest’s largest audio video visual services integrator,” has 22 offices throughout the United States, including locations in Arizona (1), California (3), Colorado (2), Nevada (2) and New Mexico (1) – all hotbeds for casinos.

As you would expect, CCS, which made the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth consecutive year in 2011, spends a lot of time in casinos. Just don’t call them gamblers. “We’re all business when we’re inside casinos, to avoid discretion,” says Rod Andrewson, manager of engineering at CCS. “We don’t gamble, we just enjoy doing high-end, high-quality systems, no matter where it is.”

That mentality has paid off for Andrewson and company as CCS won the CI Solutions Award for hotels and resorts with its installation at the Route 66 Casino in Albuquerque, N.M.

Congratulations to all CI Solutions Awards Winners. Check out each winning installation below.

Corporate: VideoSonic Systems
House of Worship: Whitlock
Retail: Cliqk
Government: Knight Security Systems
Higher Education: CCS Presentation Systems
Hotel: CCS Presentation Systems
Health Care: JVN Systems

Inside the Job
CCS landed the project, which took three months and was completed in early 2012, through several manufacturer recommendations to the casino after it experienced problems with the original A/V system installed by another integrator. “Our initial interaction was getting what they already had working properly,” Andrewson says. “But it evolved into much more.”

Indeed, CCS not only did work inside the casino it also overhauled the conference center, the 3,000-seat Legends Theater, Envy Nightlife and it installed a paging system in the elevator lobby of the 154-room Route 66 Casino Hotel.

Inside the casino, CCS added JBL speakers throughout to improve the overall distribution of sound. CCS also installed a large antenna distribution system to manage wireless microphones used throughout the casino to make announcements about special promotions and winners.

“This was an unusual requirement. The microphones weren’t dedicated to certain areas,” Andrewson says. “They wanted to be able to take any wireless microphone anywhere in the casino and have it work. The wireless microphones are tied to the specific zone of audio they’re in, allowing the paging microphone to broadcast the announcement in that area or into the entire casino, if necessary. This was one of the more difficult tasks.”

The 24/7/365 environment of the casino was also a major challenge, Andrewson says. He adds that it was critical that the six-man integrator team was able to work within their parameters quickly and correctly. Andrewson says most of the work was performed during the middle of the night and early morning.

Envy Nightlife, an upscale and multilevel dance club was in dire need of new system, Andrewson says. So CCS added seven LG LCD HDTVs, including a video wall of four 55-inch displays, and Community ceiling and pendant speakers. CCS also installed a Crestron TPS-6LW-T 5.7-inch Isys touchpanel for control.

The conference center also needed to be updated with a new control system. Andrewson says CCS replaced the old system with Crestron controls because “more capabilities were needed.”

CCS will be working with Route 66 for the next several years on different projects, including an expansion of the bingo hall. CCS is being tasked with connecting the bingo hall inside Route 66 with another bingo hall inside the Dancing Eagle Casino in Casa Blanca N.M.

CCS is devising a videoconferencing system that will combine the two casinos into one giant bingo game.

“We’ve never been involved in anything like this before,” Andrewson says. “But we’ll have a solid solution to create an extension of the bingo games going on inside Route 66.

“Hopefully our work with the Route 66 Casino will never be finished.”