Trane New York / New Jersey

NY City Center

New York, NY, Aug 30, 2012

New York City Center Brings High Performance to the Performing Arts with Help from Trane

The historic New York City Center is a 2,750-person capacity dance theater in New York City. The 12-story building has been owned by the City of New York since 1943, when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia saved the building from being demolished for a parking lot and turned it into a performing arts center.

The building's four studios play host to many famous dance companies, musical theater groups and other performances.

The Show Must Go On - Despite Construction

Because New York City Center is a cherished public asset, building management wanted to invest in projects throughout the building to preserve the venue and improve operations as well as audience comfort. New York City Center completely overhauled the seating with all new carpet, seats and sightlines to improve the audience experience. The building's historic paint scheme was also restored.

The project also included improvements to areas of the building that the public never sees, including dressing room updates and improvements to building infrastructure and systems that are critical to operating the building.

While building management wanted the building improvements to move forward, they didn't want to allow construction to interrupt the theatre schedule. City Center worked closely with its vendors to ensure that building improvements could be scheduled over the course of two summers, allowing the regularly scheduled performance seasons to proceed with minimal interruptions.

The Challenge: Keeping Dancers Warm and Patrons Cool

Controlling air conditioning in a dance theater is difficult because the audience demands cool conditions for comfort while the dancers need warm conditions to keep muscles limber. This is especially challenging because the stage and seating spaces are connected in one large open room.

Trane, a leading global provider of indoor comfort systems and a brand of Ingersoll Rand, worked closely with building operators to ensure that the building's systems worked efficiently to create a comfortable environment for both the audience and performers.

To address the challenge, City Center and Trane departed from the traditional method of controlling temperature through measuring the return air temperature. Instead, Trane installed temperature sensors all throughout the auditorium seating area and on stage, allowing temperature to be controlled by measuring the actual temperature the users of the space experience.

Integrating Trane Controls to Better Manage Building Systems

City Center management worked with Trane to bring new and existing heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment into one central chiller plant controlled by Trane controls to make management of the building systems more efficient.

The Trane building automation system (BAS) was installed to control the five existing Climate Changer air handling units (AHUs). Trane upgraded the AHUs with new airflow stations and CO2 sensors. Trane also added sensors in the theater to monitor CO2 levels, and when levels are above operator setpoints, the program will command the outside air dampers to bring fresh air into the space.

One big improvement to the building's chilled water systems is the ability to run a smaller 100 ton-Smart chiller most of the time, while reserving the larger 360-ton Trane centrifugal chillers for peak demands such as hot days and full house situations. City Center building operators can switch back and forth as needed using the Trane controls.

Bringing High Performance to the Performing Arts

The Theater was retro-commissioned for all new and existing HVAC equipment and systems, and measurement and verification devices and meters were also added in an effort to conserve energy and monitor even more closely the building systems performance.

City Center building operators now have the tools they need to ensure that when the curtains go up, the building systems perform as well as the talent on the stage. The end result is a standing ovation for New York City Center, thanks to complete comfort and satisfaction for dancers and audience members alike.

[Read More]