DG NY Office

After completing various acquisitions DG had accumulated a portfolio of multiple offices and facilities in NY. Consolidation into a single location was planned and I worked with my colleagues to identify suitable locations.

After considering a number of buildings the decision was made to take space in the Paramount Plaza building on Broadway. This was an 80,000 sqft lease over two floors and included a 9,000sqft technical facility. I co-managed the buildout of the entire space and had sole responsibility for the technical area.

This was very much a fast-track project and went from space selection to move-in and transfer of operations in just over 6 months, with inital demo and start of construction taking place in March and the facility being operational in July.

This facility had to support Ads Ingest, Syndication Ingest, Direct Response Customization and Tape Dubbing, Production Services, as well as live linear feeds for Syndication. This consolidation was to include a major reduction in tape operations and support a push to more direct digital ingest.

To maximize the flexibility of the facility and avoid creating Analog , SD and HD islands my design was around a single core HD-SDI router with legacy VTRs connected via A/D converters. This made any source available to any device in the facility. The router also had associated Timecode, RS422 VTR Control and Reference Signal levels for maximum flexibility.

The consolidated facility was critical to the overall DG business and was designed for maximum resilience with dual power feeds via different risers and even different building entrances. Fiber paths were also via diverse entries and conduits. The technical area was all on UPS power which besides ensuring maximum uptime also proved to greatly enhance the reliability of much of the legacy equipment.