{"id":465,"date":"2025-07-23T05:21:28","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T10:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/?p=465"},"modified":"2025-08-10T09:19:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T14:19:02","slug":"improvements-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/improvements-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Improvements – part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

“The strength of a community is in the character of its people, not the size of its buildings.”<\/em> Calvin Coolidge<\/sub><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From 2006 to 2009 I oversaw the design and construction of Celtic Studios<\/a> in Baton Rouge. It is a 29 acre, $56M facility containing offices, post-production facilities, support services, and some of the largest sound stages<\/a> in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my capacity as Project Manager, I recruited, hired, and oversaw dozens of design and build professionals, including some wonderfully talented architects, engineers (civil, mechanical, electrical, structural, acoustic) and contractors. My electrical engineer, Kent Gasperecz<\/a>, of AST Engineering, stands out in my memory for his good taste (Kent suggested Louis Poulsen’s HW Patina<\/a> lamp posts for the site lighting), his devotion to quality and safety, and his patience and ability to put up with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We coordinated with the local utility (Entergy) to install primary metering for the facility. This setup allowed us to receive high-voltage power directly, with metering on the primary side, giving us control over the selection of every switch and transformer. Because a film studio’s productions demand clean, reliable power, Kent spec’d equipment that was to a higher standard than that of the city. Pictured below are a switch and two transformers, one 750 KVA and one 1000 KVA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to our own electrical distribution system, we built a chilled water system with hundreds of tons of coolers for multiple buildings. I coordinated subsurface drainage with the city…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

…and fire protection with the fire department (we installed our own hydrants).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two local kids had just started a special effects company, and they were kind enough to help me out. I hired them to cut stencils and paint the names and numbers on our first buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’m very happy to see that their company is still going strong<\/a>, and that they got out of the movie studio lettering business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back on this project, building a movie studio is like having the world\u2019s largest train set, and I’m very proud of what we built in Baton Rouge. I also just wanted to show that I know more than a little about infrastructure, or as they used to call it, improvements<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building a movie studio is like having the world\u2019s largest train set, and I\u2019m very proud of what we built in Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howellgibbens.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}