Located in Seattle’s historic Montlake neighborhood, St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church stands as a spiritual and cultural anchor for the region. The current parish, completed in 1962, blends modern construction with the beautiful and signature hallmarks of Orthodox architecture.
On the initial walkthrough, Richard Buckley of (BLS) Bellevue Lighting + Stage realized that system upgrades had been attempted at one point, but the outcome was less than ideal. “People tried to replace it with LEDs that didn’t work properly with their mid-60s vintage dimmer system,” says Buckley. Buckley explained that the primary goal of church leadership was to upgrade the existing lighting system without altering the historic character of the space. Because of the building’s age, nothing visibly new could be added. “We couldn’t touch anything; they wanted a true retrofit,” he said. “We weren’t able to replace any of the existing button stations with new ETC ones.”
Unfortunately, when looking through ETC’s ArcSystem products, Buckley realized they were working with a bulb size that didn’t fit any of ETC’s fixtures. “However, we were able to send samples of our lamps to (ETC) to test and see how they dim on different systems.” After testing the lamps, both Buckley and ETC concluded that a DRd rack with integrated Unison Echo Control was the best fit for this installation. This configuration enabled the church to use simple DMX control to interact with the high-quality dimming and switching capabilities of the Echo distributed system. “With minimal effort using ETC equipment, we were able to gain control and completely modernize their infrastructure,” expressed Buckley.
Making sure that the church had support after the installation was also paramount in Buckley’s decision to go with ETC. “This is a parish that, you know, doesn’t have all the money in the world. So, I needed to make sure they had good customer service after I was done. To sell an ETC project, I’m not just selling a line or a transaction. I see it as selling a relationship between your company and mine.”
“The church was extremely pleased with how the new system worked,” Buckley stated. “Visually, you couldn’t tell that we did a single thing, but the lighting was better, the control was better, and everything was completely seamless. It looked as if we had never been there, and that was the goal.”
Learn more about this installation in this short video from BLS.
Thank you to our partners at BLS for this story collaboration and photos.