Located in Abbotsford, BC, Canada, Highstreet is a 600,000sq.ft open air shopping centre. This three-level centre features main street style shopping and dining with one and two storey buildings on the upper podium level, and a Walmart Supercentre with 1,400 covered parking stalls on the lower level. The development's compact design delivers a higher order of density than traditional regional retail projects, and is striving to become a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified project, which makes it one of the first in Canada for large scale retail projects.
The Highstreet development is by Shape Properties Corporation, one of the most active fully integrated real estate companies in Canada. With its most recent acquisitions and vision, Shape is leading some of the largest projects currently underway in North America. Highstreet is the proud recipient of the 2014 ICSC Maple Leaf Gold Award for Design & Development Excellence and the 2014 ICSC Maple Leaf Silver Award for Marketing Excellence Social Media.
Genesis Integration Inc., one of Canada's leading national systems integrators, was commissioned to provide audio for Highstreet and the project was managed by the company's Vancouver office. Designed by Ross Hazlehurst and Dan Moran of Genesis, the sound system's primary purpose is music, but it also provides for announcements including emergency instruction.
Hazlehurst explained the loudspeaker choice, "The loudspeakers would be subjected directly to the elements, so we needed a design that could handle this and sound incredible. Our first choice was Community, using the quality and wide dispersion of W Series for areas adjacent to the buildings, and R Series where greater throw was required."
Sixty Community W Series W2-2W8 surface mounted loudspeakers are distributed throughout the mall, as well as a set of R Series R.5-94's that re-enforce sound across the single large parking area. The system is set up as a single source throughout, but due to the large area there are five satellite racks that feed off the main rack. These smaller racks house a local amplifier which feeds the zone in that proximity. All processing of the audio is via Biamp AudiaFLEX DSP.
Genesis installed a DJ input plate by the central escalator to allow for events and presentations, especially at Christmas. DJ's can bring in their own rigs and patch into the sound system to provide audio throughout the mall.
"One challenge in such a large construction was creating a single zone from a central rack over such great distances", Hazlehurst commented. "But we solved this with RDL audio transmitter receivers that daisy chained the audio from rack to rack."
Hazlehurst concludes, "To my knowledge, this is the first outdoor mall of its kind in BC to have sound re-enforcement of this calibre. For me, this mall is reminiscent to the outdoor malls I have seen in California, such as Universal City. It lifts the perspective from just being a shopping centre to more of an entertainment facility. The coverage and quality of sound is excellent and all the feedback we have received has been very positive."
(Jim Evans)
