Second Line Stages
Second Line Stages is a 90,000 square foot, $32 million historically significant film studio complex in the Lower Garden District in New Orleans, LA. It is the first independent film studio in the country to earn the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification by the United States Green Building Council. The project has been recognized as the Nation’s Best Tax Credit Financed Project by the Council of Development Finance Agencies. Moses Engineers provide mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) services for the offices and sound stages. Already, several major motion pictures have been filmed there including Django Unchained, Treme, and The Green Lantern.
The historic preservation project adaptively reutilizes two brick warehouse structures and adds new construction on previously demolished ground to house three full-function and equipped sound stages. Additional space utilization includes 15,000 square feet of office space, production support areas and a 49 seat digital screening theater. To mitigate the energy intensive uses of the sound stages, each sound stage’s mechanical system is designed to compensate for the heat given off by the high lighting loads by directing the air to those areas via portable, flexible ducts extending from trunk ducts located at the highest reaches of the stage. This allows the temperatures in the areas above the occupants to vary.
In addition, Second Line Stages ownership and management teams encourage production tenants to utilize HPL advanced technology lighting instruments, as well as ultra-energy conserving light emitting diode (LED) technology to reduce lighting energy loads as well as the high heat producing /air conditioning demands associated with these loads.
The project design utilized sophisticated energy modeling that accurately reflects the actual set-up, production, tear-down sequences of soundstage operations. This allowed central systems’ designs to take into account appropriate demand factors and diversities and be sized for the actual operational load profile, eliminating unused capacities. Energy savings are anticipated to be 25% better than a facility that provides basic compliance to energy codes. The project design provides for renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaics (solar), to be integrated into the electrical system when their technologies become commercially cost effective.
