Byline: Robert Cashill

Even by the standards of offbeat consumer concepts, combining a furniture store with an IMAX theatre is a risky idea, given the slender connection between contemporary sofas and big-screen cinema. But doing it twice, and succeeding both times, looks like genius. Boston-based Barry and Eliot Tatelman share a magic touch in the intersection of shopping and entertainment they call "shoppertainment." In August 2002, the brothers turned heads by opening the 262-seat AT&T Broadband IMAX 3D Theatre in the Natick, MA, branch of Jordan's Furniture, a company their grandfather started in 1918. The business has come a long way since Samuel Tatelman started it off the back of a truck; it now has four stores, and his grandsons, who are well-known local TV and radio pitchmen, sold it to mega-entrepreneur Warren Buffett, chairman/CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, in 1999.

That backing has enabled them to grow Jordan's in unusual ways. "When I first heard about the IMAX at the Natick branch, I said, 'Huh?'" recalls Rich Testa, principal of Saugus, MA-based Testa Lighting Design. "But Jordan's is the kind of store that ignores what everyone else is doing in the market today, because they do it so well." Before he hung his own shingle, Testa helped add illumination excitement to the Natick store, including the colorful exterior and the elaborate New Orleans motif within. Last July, the Tatelmans tapped him for what they proudly call their "biggest and craziest" store - a 260,000 sq. ft. behemoth in Reading, MA, more than twice as big as the Natick branch, boasting the 500-seat Comcast IMAX 3D Theatre and their most novel decor to date. It had the good fortune to open in October, as the Boston Red Sox were racing to a World Series win. Defying the conventional wisdom has again paid off - Jordan's enjoyed a record-shattering 2004, and its presentation of The Polar Express made the Reading IMAX the highest-grossing US movie theatre the weekend it opened.

The Reading store is the one that proves conclusively that its owners are full of beans. Its highlight is Beantown - 17,000 sq. ft. of Boston-themed whimsy, forged from a whopping 280,000lbs. of Jelly Belly jellybeans. Shoppers on their way to the IMAX or any of the vignettes that are part of the 160,000 sq. ft. showroom (including stores-within-the-store for Bose home theatre products and Pine Cone Hills bedding) can indulge their sweet tooth at a Richardson Farms Ice Cream shop that's below Beantown's Biggest Dig, a 35'-high sundae that plays off the city's massive construction project and is scooped from four million multicolored Jelly Bellys. The Sweet House, a mock State House made from more than six million jellybeans artfully arranged (in clear Plexiglas columns) to resemble its gold-domed namesake, serves up candies, with a Johnny's Luncheonette on hand for other cuisine. A full-size replica of Fenway Park's "Green Monster" left-field fence is mounted in Beantown, with Wally the Mascot perched above it to add to the fun (unless you're a Yankees fan; he's clutching a New York player in his grasp). The Liquid Fireworks light-and-aqua show, put on by Cape Coral, FL-based Waltzing Waters, entertains the crowds as some patrons take trapeze lessons from the Trapeze School of New York under a model of the Lenny Zakim Bridge.

"It absolutely works to bring in customers," says Testa of this jellybean-fueled jamboree, which was designed by Joanne Newbold of New York City-based J/Newbold Associates and constructed and installed by VDA & Adirondack Scenic. "Jordan's is like a casino, in that you have to walk through the store to get to the theatre, and there's a lot to distract you on your way. If the store makes a sale on just one theatre patron who comes through, it's worth it to them."

It was also worth it to bring in lighting that would enhance and unify the different elements. "Beantown is a mini-Disney, and I wanted it to sing with color," says Testa. "Eliot was excited about that, but he said to me, 'I want people to know that when they look at this-or-that jellybean, they will know it's Jelly Belly Pistachio or Banana.' So, we took some of that color out and put some ETC Source Fours[R] up top to throw patterns and breakups on the various elements." Testa's design uses four Martin Professional MAC 2000 Profiles and 400 Series UV lights from Wildfire, plus architectural fixtures from Juno, Lightolier, and Lithonia to punch up some of the pieces. "Eliot loves ropelight, so there's some of it here [from NSL], wrapped around the dome and the columns of The Sweet House." Twenty-two Chroma-Q scrollers are positioned above the trapeze to give it a bit more bounce, while cyc lights illuminate a large graphic panel (with images of landmarks like Prudential Tower) that wraps around the attraction. MACs "dance around the pool" that houses Liquid Fireworks, which has its own lighting system. Kate Henry, Mercedes Roman, and Matt Guminski assisted Testa on the project.

Local LED vendor Color Kinetics made its own contributions to Beantown's capital. "Joanne wanted to put some strobes inside the dome, but I didn't want to see strobes sticking off it nor anyone climbing 35' up or so to replace the lamps," Testa says. "So, I put in a 50-node strand of Color Kinetics iColor[R] Flex. Each node is about the size of a jellybean, anyway, so they blend in fine. They do a constant, random strobe all the way around, giving a sense of movement to the top of the dome without going over the top." The long-life iColor Flex also put the cherry on top of the Biggest Dig. "There's a large cherry there that's lifted up and down by a crane, and the red, strobing iColor Flex nodes we put in make it glow like the Times Square ball. A further advantage to the technology is that most of the showroom lighting is MR-16 heads pointed downward on the furniture, which raises the electric bill. Anything Jordan's can do to reduce that is appreciated, and LEDs fit the bill."

Chris Burr of Port Lighting Systems in Amesbury, MA, was the main programmer on the project, with Gordon Manson and Jon Gonda also contributing. "The iColor Flex nodes are so fast, that if you're using a Wholehog[R] Effects Engine to do these cool effects with them, sometimes the refresh is so slow on the consoles that they start tripping up, and the sequence gets lost or stuck on something," he says. "You have to watch the speed of what you're generating."

Speed defined the lighting task as the opening loomed. Burr had worked with Testa on the Natick store, and "we tried to use the same programming in Reading as time was at a premium." Given the different amounts of channeling required, Beantown uses a Flying Pig Systems Hog 1000, with a Hog 500 in the IMAX theatre. "The two theatres have the same kind of lightshow, generated by Martin MAC 2000s in Reading and Clay Paky washlights in Natick. Jordan's said, 'We want the same exact thing that we have in our Natick store.' And I replied, 'Well, that's fine,'" says Testa, who lit both theatres. Not that there aren't differences. Besides standard worklights, houselights, Tivoli LED striplights, and edge lighting to guide audiences to and from their seats, Testa made more extensive use of 420W Color Kinetics ColorBlaze[R] 72 border lights. "Jordan's asked me to put in longer-lasting, more energy-efficient equipment. Their facilities guys are great, but they're not theatre people, and the Color Kinetics units have a 100,000-hour lamp life. They're in the pit of the theatre, lighting almost all of the 100' by 80' screen before showtimes; the MACs fill it in. I used the automated lights for creating kinetic looks, like a screensaver, between shows; the corporate logos are displayed by the lights, and there are 400 cues lined up on the Hog as the music plays."

Testa's lighting spruces up the theatre's lobby, which has a black-painted ceiling and Transformit tensile structures made from stretched sheets of white fabric. "I put ETC Source Four Jrs. with abstract patterns in there to create a little anticipatory excitement as you enter. The hallway off the lobby has a low, 8' ceiling, which serves to emphasize just how big the theatre and the screen are. There, I put fourteen 16W decorative colored pattern ceiling lights from d'ac; they're pattern projectors in an architectural fixture with dichroic colored lenses in them that emit little streaks of light." An ETC Unison dimming system handles normal/emergency lighting, and there are three LCD Unison Touch Stations available so that an operator can bring up any of the houselights from several vantage points. A separate Crestron LCD controller offers touchscreen control over the Hog 500 console.