PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh area residents no longer have to hop on a plane to get a taste of Las Vegas. Cannery Casino Resorts, a Las Vegas casino developer, and Chauvet have brought a bit of Vegas to North Strabane, Penn., located on Pittsburgh’s southern fringe. Cannery Casino Resorts invested $450 million to turn Meadows Race Track into an entertainment complex with harness racing, casino, bowling center, lounge and restaurants. The project includes a 350,000-square-foot gaming facility that incorporates Chauvet lighting fixtures in the casino’s Silks Lounge.
This project marks the first U.S. installation of Chauvet’s Legend 4500, a 10- or 14-channel LED moving yoke wash particularly suited for production, stage and architectural applications, with an output comparable to a 300W discharge wash fixture, and full RGBW mixing capability.
“Silks Lounge is smaller than we had hoped, but we’re looking at a 200-seat cocktail style lounge and a stage,” said Dave Tenant, director of technical entertainment for Cannery Casino Resorts LLC. “We wanted to take the room and bring a little Vegas overkill to it, similar to our One Six Lounge in Las Vegas, in which we used Chauvet fixtures.”
The 10 Legend 4500s are used as stage wash lighting for the 23-foot by 19-foot main stage, said Matt Druzbik, lighting director. “They are nice and bright, the colors are great, they have a nice white and they move quickly,” he said.
Each unit comes fitted with a total of 54 high power RBGW LEDs and a 15° a lens. It produces a long-throw wash with a beam angle of 10° and a field angle of 22°. An optional 30° lens can be swapped into the fixture to respectively provide a tighter or wider beam configuration.
Cannery Casino officials are sold on LED fixtures, Tenant said, and since Chauvet’s LEDs worked so well in the previous installation, he didn’t give a thought to using another company.
“It’s an all-Chauvet rig,” Druzbik said. “We have Q-Spot 575s, Q-Spot 300s and COLORdash Pars as truss warmers.”
The 1,400-square-foot Silks Lounge features Vegas acts as well as local and New York talent. An Elvis impersonator is scheduled, as is the Rat Pack Is Back, which does a tribute to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Meadows Race Track was originally built in 1963. Cannery Casino Resorts purchased the property two years ago and immediately erected a tent for gaming while existing buildings were demolished to make room for the new casino and race track accommodations.
The facility offers 3,700 slot machines, electronic table games, casual and fine dining in three sit-down restaurants, a five-venue food court, live harness racing, a 24-lane bowling center and free parking.
For more information, please visit www.chauvetlighting.com.
