Open Yesterday:

How Avala Restaurant Went from Bare Concrete to Opening Night in Six Weeks

A restaurant, lounge and full nightclub with a stage, all needing audio, video, lighting, effects and security, air-freighted in and installed before Christmas.

AVALA Restaurant, Bar & Lounge, Heartland Plaza, Chaguanas.

I often joke that every customer wants to open “yesterday”. They give us an impossible deadline, and six months later they open. The team behind AVALA Restaurant, Bar & Lounge in Chaguanas, Trinidad meant it, and our sound and lighting installation had them open on time.

We sent our first quotation on November 1st, and the client needed to open before Christmas. When we walked in, the room was still bare concrete.

The challenge

This was never a speaker-and-amplifier job. AVALA is three venues in one: a restaurant, a lounge, and a full nightclub with live performances on stage. The scope covered:

• Audio across several independently controlled zones
• Video screens with live stage camera feeds
• Ambient and effect lighting, including moving heads, strobes, lasers and fog
• Security cameras

Every piece of equipment had to come in by air freight and clear customs. The whole system then had to be installed, commissioned and working in about six weeks. Those deadlines don’t allow a missed shipment, a wrong part or a day spent waiting on a decision.

Designing for the deadline

Product availability shaped the design from the start. We chose equipment that suited each space and could ship straight away, and where a product couldn’t, we swapped it for an alternative quickly. Our close relationships with our manufacturers made the difference here. We worked with each brand to confirm the design and get stock moving immediately.

The venue is divided into zones, and each one has its own sound and lighting control: VIP Upstairs, VIP Downstairs, Main Bar, Dancefloor and Stage. The upstairs VIP room has its own speakers, amplifier and lighting, so it can run as a separate room.

The main equipment:

• Loudspeakers: Community IP8 and IP6 high-output two-way cabinets, Desono EX-S10 coaxials and MASK6CT design cabinets
• Amplification and processing: Community ALC amplified loudspeaker controllers with onboard DSP, plus Community REVAMP amplifiers
• Live and background audio: an Allen & Heath digital mixer for performances, and Bluesound streaming for background music, controlled from an iPad
• Video: a PTZOptics 4K stage camera, Blackmagic SDI-to-HDMI converters, and Alfatron extension and distribution to the screens
• Lighting and effects: Blizzard Wink moving heads, Storm Chaser fixtures, Snowblind strobes, Atmosfear Hex Jet fog machines, and X-Laser Mercury lasers, all distributed over Blizzard Pipeline DMX splitters
• Security: Hikvision IP cameras (we don’t publish security system details, and a good integrator shouldn’t)

Cable before cabinets

We didn’t wait for the equipment to arrive. Our team started running cable before the speakers had even left the factory: runs for speakers and subwoofers, white lighting, coloured lighting, DMX moving heads, fog machines, lasers, cameras and control.

That meant hundreds of cable runs in a room still being built around us. What stopped it turning into chaos was simple discipline. Every cable was labelled as it was pulled, and our project manager on site understood the whole system, not only his own trade. With the labelling and the coordination in place, the work went smoothly.

Bringing it to life

When the equipment cleared customs, it went straight into place. We programmed the manufacturer’s FIR filters for every loudspeaker into its amplifier, so each cabinet runs with its intended phase-accurate tuning. Most bar installations skip this step, and you can hear the difference.

We kept the two sides of the audio system separate on purpose. Live performances run through the Allen & Heath desk, which gives the engineer full control. Day-to-day music runs through Bluesound on an iPad, so staff can manage the room without touching the professional equipment.

Live performance on the AVALA stage, with moving-head lighting, screens and zoned audio.

The result

AVALA opened on time, and opening night was a great success.

A great deal of the credit goes to the client. They had a strong project management team, hired contractors they trusted, and made decisions quickly when needed. With a timeline like this, nobody can wait around for a decision.

Opening night at AVALA.

The bigger picture in the Caribbean

Most fast-track projects in the region don’t fail for technical reasons. They fail because decisions stall, payments are late, trades work against each other, and nobody keeps track of how everything fits together. Workmanship suffers too. The region has few CTS-certified professionals, so owners often end up with unlabelled cables, no as-built drawings, and a system nobody else can maintain.

As an AVIXA CTS, CTS-D and CTS-I holder, I’m working to raise that standard. Streamline works with any brand, as long as the installation is done right.

What to ask before you hire an integrator

And what owners need to do on their side: make decisions quickly, keep payments on schedule, and get every trade on board early. We need all the horses pulling in the same direction.

Go check out Avala and let us know what you think