Cleveland, OH–The Elf Foundation, a non-profit organization that creates Room of Magic theaters across America, local Cleveland managing partners A-V Services,and ControlWorks LLC, and a roster of consumer electronics manufacturers, recently dedicated a private entertainment theater to Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. It marks the Elf Foundation’s 46th children’s entertainment theater since the foundation’s July 2001 inception.
“When Tim Campbell of A-V Services approached the foundation to offer his design and installation services pro bono for a theater at Rainbow Babies, we jumped at the chance to work with what is one of the country’s leading children’s medical facilities,” said Doug Weinstein, president of the Elf Foundation. “We knew we would want to create something special and immediately reached out to our top corporate sponsors to enlist their support for the project.”
Working with the full support of Rainbow Babies’ Ms. Meri Armour, senior vice president of of Women’s, Children’s, and Cancer Services, the hospital offered a large conference room space for remodel and installation of a state-of-the-art movie theater. The theater will allow kids to watch their favorite DVD’s, nature films, and educational material all in a friendly kid-centric environment that will take them away from the often-sterilized atmosphere of a hospital setting.
“This has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever been involved in,” said Tim Campbell, principal of Lakewood, Ohio-based A-V Services, who acted as the general managing partner for the project. “The hospital personnel were terrific to work with, our friends at ControlWorks and GuiFX lent their support to the project, and Elf’s corporate sponsors came through with some great gear that is going to make a lot of little kids extremely happy. We’ve all rallied around the vision of the Elf Foundation and have a sense of pride at our accomplishment.”
The theater was created inside of an existing, yet underutilized, conference room and has a seating capacity of over 40 kids. The hospital invested over $25,000 in order to give the space a makeover that would have a bright, fun feel for the kids. The Elf Foundation assisted in underwriting the $75,000 theater with tremendous support from some of their keys corporate sponsors.
Included in the Room of Magic is a Hi-Definition DLP projector from Runco International. The projector shoots a wide-screen hi-def picture onto an acoustically perforated filmscreen manufactured and donated by the Stewart Filmscreen Corporation. Legacy Audio and M & K Sound supplied speakers for the surround sound configuration. Lutron donated the room’s lighting control system, while Crestron provided touch panel automation. UltraLink donated the wiring and cabling needs that connect all the dots and accommodates all of the hi-def signals going from Point A to Point B.
ControlWorks LLC of Cleveland, provided an enormous amount of pro bono man-hours to handle the Crestron system programming and on-site system support, and GuiFX of West Palm Beach, Florida, donated the user interface template for the Crestron touch panels.
For more information, visit www.elfSystems.org.
