Violet Crown lobby

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Project manager Bruce Lowe says the 7,700sf cinema space includes a restaurant and lounge area and a lobby with seating. 

“Four cinemas provide luxury seating and the ability to dine while watching a film in downtown Austin,” he said.  “The approximate contract cost was $1.5 million.

According to Lowe, ipe wood cladding was originally located on the facade of the existing exterior elevator shaft.

“This material was removed to make way for stucco and later recycled for use inside the Violet Crown’s bar and lounge space,” Lowe said.  “Additional construction materials used were steel, concrete, metal studs, drywall, sound isolation clips, sound separation barrier, enhanced cooling, electrical, plumbing, exposed concrete floors, stucco exterior and TPO roofing.”

A challenge the construction team faced was the available space within the existing 2nd Street building’s structure did not have adequate depth to support the needs of the Violet Crown’s theater venue, he said.

Lowe says the solution to the challenge was to build a cantilevered structure out over the sidewalk to accommodate the added theater depths.

“This in itself was still not enough to provide all of the space required for the theaters, so the public entrance corridor to each of the theater venues became a tunnel that was slid under the top two rows of the stadium style seating.

“To take it a step forward the space needed for the theater’s support facilities (restrooms, concession, kitchen, bar and lounge) was built by extending into the existing adjacent parking garage space.  This required leveling and waterproofing these slabs to accommodate the new venue.  With all of the spaces so stacked up on top of each other, this made the necessity of soundproofing the walls, floors, seating structures and cantilevers extremely critical.

“We worked with a highly renowned sound engineer, Jim Barath, attained by Violet Crown Cinema Austin LLC to ensure that all of these systems were constructed to precise specifications.  These space limitations also created a serious challenge with the theater’s audio visual systems.  We worked together with the A/V engineer to find every last inch needed to allow for the proper projector throw distances, speaker depths and screen sizes.

“Violet Crown insisted that these space challenges could not in any way effect the quality of the theater experience they provided for their patrons and the team worked many hours to ensure that this was indeed the case.

“To achieve this goal, the Structura team built recessed speaker boxes in the exterior cantilever walls, overhead projector boxes with retractable platforms for access for maintenance and “James Bond” style secret cubby hole sliding doors to stow away the front row recliner chairs when wheelchair seating space is required.

“Other little solutions were found such as recessing the fountain drink refreshment stand under the third row of seating and providing built-in waste receptacles that are tucked under the end of the seating rows at each theater entrance.”

Vice president of Structura Kevin Jones says the end result of all these extra steps of ingenuity is a first class theater experience that can be found in the heart of downtown Austin’s 2nd Street District.

“There is nothing comparable like this in the area and Structura was proud to lead the project!” Jones said.

  Founded in 2006, Structura Inc. specializes in office finish outs and large commercial construction projects.  The company has offices in Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.  Typical customers include telecommunications, healthcare, retail and office space, data centers, oil and gas office and warehouse installations and restaurants.  The founders of the company are Rusty Morgan and Kevin Jones.  –ab

Superintendent: Rob Pugh

©2012 Construction News, Ltd.