(Seguin) — The Seguin Coliseum is getting a major upgrade, that should improve the overall user experience of the city’s largest public meeting space.
The Seguin City Council on Tuesday approved the a complete replacement of the audio and visual systems in the building.
Parks and Recreation Director Jack Jones says the work comes after some other improvements were also recently made to the facility. Jones says the upgrade to the A/V system is something that’s long overdue.
“We are very fortunate at budget, you all approved the chairs at the Coliseum, new stage lighting. We replaced the original stage lighting back in 1977 and now, audio and video. If you go to conferences — you go to San Marcos to their convention center, if you go to New Braunfels, their convention center — you will see that they’ve got screens everywhere. They’ve got projectors that are mounted up high. We have a cart that goes out in the middle of everything and pretty wonky so we are pleased to come forward with updated audio, video for the Coliseum,” said Jones.
Jones described some of the upgrades to the council. He says they will all greatly enhance what people see and hear while they are in the coliseum.
“We will find new projectors, large screens — if you are looking at the Coliseum, you’ve got the screen in the middle and that will be relocated but we will have two more up high on the sides and then two in the very back when we have the chamber luncheons. Those who use the breakout rooms, the audio can be synched to each of the rooms even though there will be a camera in there that you can project speakers and the video screens as they are speaking which you have that at convention centers around the state and around the country. We can even use that camera to have public meetings and go online with it as well,” said Jones.
City officials say they are excited about this change. They say the enhanced audio and video capabilities should help to increase the usage of the coliseum.
“It took a long time to get to this point, to get to where we felt like okay, we’ve got something that is really going to make a difference, to bring in conferences, weddings and those things is what Steve talks about — bringing in people. People come and stay at hotels, spend money here, sales taxes go up whenever you have special events and conventions in Seguin,” said Jones.
The city will spend just under $240,000 to purchase and install the new equipment.