Around the turn of the century, horse and car race courses began expanding into the casino market. The result is the “racino,” a gambling and entertainment combo that needs the latest electrical infrastructure, backup power, low-voltage security and digital access. Chapel Electric Co. and its 15-year-old low-voltage division, Chapel-Romanoff Technologies (CRT), recently installed the latest electrical and voice/data/video system technologies at Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway in Dayton, Ohio.


Part of the Hollywood Casino franchise, Dayton Racino’s 100,000-square-foot gaming facility features a combination of racing and slot machines in its adjacent casino. The racino complex is on a 170-acre site.


The complex’s gaming facility features 1,000 video lottery terminals (VLTs), a restaurant and sports bar, a food court, stores, and, of course, racing. An outdoor, 5/8-mile horse track is surrounded by 1,000 enclosed seats, and the campus includes a 126-stall horse paddock and related buildings.


Chapel Electric provided the electrical installation for general contractor Turner Construction. 


CRT installed the network infrastructure for the casino and outside premises. CRT’s work included the information technology (IT) data system, the audio/video system and electronic safety and security (ESS).


Chapel Electric worked with Turner from preconstruction through Certificate of Occupancy on all five electrical bid packages on-site (gaming, racing, site utilities, race track lighting and parking lots/driveways). Chapel Electric installed the electrical system, which included an elaborate light-emitting diode (LED) lighting fixture package, emergency power distribution with a 4,000-ampere (A) electrical service, a 2-­megawatt diesel generator and two uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units. The system includes almost 10,000 recessed floor boxes so the casino can make future changes to gaming fixtures.


Chapel Electric also installed a 350-kilowatt diesel generator at the facility’s maintenance building to feed the track lights during racing events, said Bob Shaffer, contract operations vice president at Chapel Electric.


Low-voltage installation had to be conducted in partnership with the power install. Since both power and data were provided to each VLT, CRT and Chapel Electric worked closely on the project.


Chapel Electric provided the electrical system and backbone that powers Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway. From day one, the project’s challenges were as unique as the racino itself would be. 


While construction got underway at a gallop, design work experienced an unexpected delay. During the early design phase, the electrical engineer of the project’s engineering company left for a new position as vice president at mechanical engineering firm Concord Atlantic Engineers (CAE). Project owner Penn National Gaming valued the engineer’s services enough that the casino company reassigned electrical design responsibilities to CAE, which delayed the design process by several months. During this engineering delay, the first 25 percent of the construction project was already completed. 


For Chapel Electric’s design team, this meant intensive work to catch up and ensure the project was completed on time. 


“To help accommodate for this delay, we added a second shift,” said Rick Swabb, Chapel Electric general foreman. 


This provided the boost the company needed and ultimately ensured the project stayed on schedule for the racino’s Aug. 28, 2014, grand opening.


Once on site, the work peaked at 60 electricians in two shifts, said Nick Ames, Chapel Electric general foreman. During the project, those electricians installed a staggering 360 miles of wire and cable and ran more than 58 miles of conduit.


Staging all of this cable, conduit and related equipment was another challenge. On-site space was tight, so the company sought other options. 


“As with most construction sites these days, staging was a major concern,” Shaffer said. “You can only store the material that you plan on installing the next two weeks.” 


Chapel Electric rented an empty warehouse owned by the City of Dayton adjacent to the site as the staging area the crew members needed. 


“The warehouse came complete with a loading dock, so major deliveries were no problem at all,” he said.


High stakes, low-voltage


Every low-voltage installation in the gaming market is unique. Each casino requires the latest in security and IP connections. The Hollywood Gaming Dayton Raceway had to be able to incorporate new technology, and it needed the flexibility to move its gaming stations as required.


To attain this flexibility, CRT had to manage creative pathways and terminations for a wide variety of applications and IP devices. Also, equipment unrelated to gaming needed flexibility. For instance, employee office workstations needed a variety of services from simple wall outlets to data and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), said Jeff Carr, CRT project manager.


CRT needed to provide underfloor connectivity for the VLTs, ceiling-mounted cameras in the casino and restaurant, and audio/video and entertainment systems throughout the area. It also ran low-voltage cable for outdoor digital signage and the clocking system around the racetrack. Workers had to wire data connections to each horse stall and retail point of purchase networking equipment.


Inside, CRT installed IT systems in several telecom rooms and two equipment rooms, which house the main distribution frames (MDFs). The MDFs for the IT data and audio/video systems were physically separated to protect the core IT system from the outside-vendor-operated system on the audio/video network. In addition, the surveillance system has its own MDF.


CRT ran a variety of single-mode and multimode fiber optic cables to provide redundant cabling between the equipment and telecom rooms. CRT used Berk-Tek’s Armor Tek cable for most of the installation because the flexible armor around the cable jacketing provided an additional layer of protection, which was useful in indoor cable trays and against the weather in outdoor trenches.


The outdoor cameras, mounted on parking lot and camera towers, were installed with Berk-Tek outside plant fiber optic lines containing two strands of OM3 multimode fiber optic cable. In addition, many of the smaller structures also used fiber optic cables, including the VIP parking gates, the horse paddocks and maintenance buildings.


The audiovisual network—which included signage, video displays and baseband video—was cabled with 65,000 feet of shielded Category 6a gray cabling. The horizontal cable for the audio/video ran near the ceilings in cable tray and J-hooks through the heating and air conditioning pathways, to connect the 300 TVs and video monitors.


That cable was then terminated with the Leviton eXtreme Category 6a shielded QuickPort connectors. The connections were made easier by connectors that are hinged for easy access, as well as tool-less termination into the Leviton flat shielded QuickPort patch panels, Carr said.


VLTs needed teamwork 


Technical challenges with the VLTs cropped up during the project. When the job started, Shaffer’s team visited another Ohio casino and learned from the casino’s head of maintenance that more than half of their VLTs suffered voltage drops due to the overall circuit length, which meant most of the wire had to be pulled again. Chapel Electric leveraged this information to ensure no such problem interfered with the Dayton racino’s operation. 


“We were very careful with voltage drop in the gaming building, specifically with the VLTs” Swabb said. “All of the VLTs were fed out of two electrical closets on the far north end of the building.” 


More than half of the 20A branch circuits leading to the VLT banks required No. 8 or larger circuit size. 


“We had no voltage drop anywhere throughout the project,” he said.


Chapel Electric teamed up with the CRT low-voltage crew to design the pathways that led to the casino. Chapel Electric took on the gaming facility pathways to each of the 1,000 VLTs, which included duct banks in the slab floor.


“Floor duct systems are not typically used in enterprise locations, such as office buildings, but, in this environment, it provided a more secure raceway for the horizontal cables to the VLTs,” Carr said. “In addition, the electrical cable could be run in the same duct system, which provided physical separation between low-voltage and power.”


Power outlets were located in the floor duct system, and the data cable was pulled up through slot openings and terminated to outlets under the VLTs.


Because CRT was installing data cable alongside electrical cable, the company opted for shielded Category 6a cable. The horizontal cable was color-coded to correspond to applications in the casino. To provide cable redundancy to the VLTs, CRT ran 30,000 feet each of Category 6a green and white cable. CRT installed an additional 8,000 feet of shielded Category 6a blue for data applications.


Layers of security


For surveillance, CRT also installed 500 cameras within the gaming area. CRT connected all of it through 145,000 feet of black LANmark-1000 Cat 6 cable.


The high ceilings in the racino’s gaming area created another cabling pathway challenge. All of the indoor pan-tilt-zoom cameras, projector mounts and several TVs were exposed and needed to be camouflaged. In addition, the cable from the tray and J-hooks needed to be covered and protected as they dropped down to the surveillance devices. To accomplish this, CRT devised a creative solution by designing and building custom conduit pathways for the cable, which would also provide physical support for the cameras. CRT cut 1½-inch conduit to specific lengths, attached flanges to secure the cable to the cameras and painted everything black to blend in with the ceiling.


“Because the job was moving so quickly, we could do this behind the scenes in our warehouse in tandem with the construction schedule,” Carr said.


The company’s installers could easily bring the cable from the tray down through the prefabricated conduit assembly and attach it to the cameras.


What are the odds?


The entire project demanded creativity and speed.


“For CRT, one challenge would be that the contract was awarded in November 2013, and, therefore, the initial cabling needed to be built outdoors in the winter months,” Carr said. “This outdoor work included trenching and laying of the outside cable.”


Carr recalled that Mother Nature made this even more difficult. The winter of 2014 proved to be a record breaker for cold and snow. Some days, the severely cold temperatures required outdoor work to be stopped for the day. Indoors, propane heaters needed to be refueled daily to keep work going.


“Because of the fast pace of the cable installation, we needed to make sure that the cable was on-site when we needed it, but storage on-site was a concern,” Carr said.


The company’s local distributor, Graybar, warehoused the cable. He added that, at one point during the project, there was more low-voltage cable in the warehouse facility than electrical products, due to the large volume of low-voltage work underway, but it was moved quickly, he said. Other Graybar warehouses located in nearby Youngstown and Cincinnati also staged some of the cabling.


Completion


The project was completed on a tight schedule, which was even more strained by the harsh winter and compact staging area, but the overall end product was very successful.


“I am very proud to be associated with the CRT crew at the Hollywood Dayton Raceway,” Carr said. “There was personal sacrifice by the crew of time away from family with the extended hours required to meet schedule.”


Despite the challenges, he said the team succeeded because of its positive attitude, professionalism and energy.


“Personally, as a 36-year industry member [31 years spent with Chapel and CRT], I have been part of many large construction projects,” Carr said. “This one was special. As a young division of Chapel Electric, CRT has much to look forward to with what was learned at Hollywood Dayton Raceway.”


Shaffer enjoyed the process of working with CRT.


“With Project Manager Jeff Carr and Field Supervisors Lee Olinger and Dan Flohre, CRT proved once again that it is truly Ohio’s premier technology and AV contractor,” he said.


With the project complete, Shaffer can now enjoy the facility, whether looking at a new job, or spending a night out on the town with his wife. In either case, he said he is satisfied with the work done there by his crew. 


“I feel very proud of the craftsmanship that is on display throughout the entire campus,” he said. 


From left: CRT’s Jeff Carr; Penn National IT’s Brad Wagner; CRT’s Lee Olinger, Penn National IT’s Kevin Mousa; and CRT’s Dennis Severance