The sharks are still swimming in the Windy City. 🦈
Our Connect Series amplifiers continue to power audio inside the iconic Willis Tower in downtown Chicago. When the tower needed an audio system built for power, flexibility, and scalability, our partners at USIS AV selected LEA to serve as the backbone.
Take another look at this 2020 install and see how it all came together.
THE SPEC
📍Venue: Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower)
👷♂️Integrator: USIS AV
🏢 Venue Size: 2 floors, over 90,000 sq. ft.
🦈 Product Used: CS354 (10)
THE VENUE
Located near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, and one of the seven members of the Claremont Colleges consortium. Home to 1,300 students, The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2025 Best US Colleges rankings rated Claremont McKenna as the 5th-best overall college or university and the best liberal arts college in the nation.
When the college’s gym could no longer adequately serve the college’s expanding varsity programs, the school decided to build a new athletic center — Roberts Pavilion. Groundbreaking took place in Spring 2014, and the building officially opened for recreational use in August 2016. Roberts Pavilion has become a central hub for CMC and the Claremont–Mudd–Scripps athletic community, offering cutting-edge facilities for varsity sports, fitness, physical education, and campus-wide events. However, the audio in the event arena no longer met the student body’s needs, so the college embarked on a project to improve the intelligibility and audio experience in the arena.
“LEA Professional was the obvious choice for this project,” said Alyssa Ishi, Applications Engineer at Geer Tech. “Its flexibility to support unique spaces, combined with the power of the Cloud, made all the difference. The students at Claremont College deserve exceptional sound quality, and that’s exactly what they now experience every day.”
THE INSTALL
For Anthony Magarelli, Director of Engineering at USIS AV, the historical landmark came with its challenges, not only were the team ensuring equal acoustic coverage across 17 different rooms within 90,000 square ft of space, USIS AV also had to contend with high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass.
“Product placement was a real challenge on this project and we were constantly re-evaluating zone layout and counts,” commented Magarelli. “That was the beauty of working with LEA Professional amplifiers, their system is completely scalable so their form factor worked really well in this space and eliminated some of the main challenges.”
In the end, USIS AV installed ten CS354 amplifiers to provide equal coverage across the two floors.
THE INTEGRATOR
The team at USIS AV was tasked with the AV design and build in two floors of the tower.
USIS AV, headquartered in Pearl River, New York, provides an extensive range of services to its clients including technology services, electrical contracting, AV systems, security, PoE lighting, wireless solutions and training services. The company has a presence in 10 major US Markets and prides itself on providing exceptional customer service.
We got the opportunity to talk shop with Anthony Magarelli, Director of Engineering at USIS AV.
Read the full spotlight here for more about their business, challenges, and motivations.
For Pearl River, New York-based USIS AV, IoT capabilities such as LEA Professional’s Cloud Platform are vital to providing exceptional customer care.
“The ability to have this system on the cloud allows us to troubleshoot projects with any of our certified support staff across different time zone,” said Magarelli. “No matter where our client might be based, we can still provide them with an incredible level of support, even in a time where travel is not always possible.”
With the global pandemic causing delays all over the world, Margarelli was working against the clock to get this project completed on time.
“It was LEA Professional’s responsiveness and professionalism that made it possible for us to finish this project, despite challenging circumstances,” said Margarelli. “While we experienced some delays from other manufactures, LEA got us their product on time and they were with us every step of the way.”
THE CONCLUSION
It’s truly an honor for our products and our company to be represented in one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. We’d like to thank USIS AV for giving our Connect Series chance in this project and we hope that people will benefit from the support provided by our amps in the Willis Tower for many years to come.
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