Minor League Ball Park Sports Brivo ACS WebService Technology

  • Jun 20, 2011

Brivo Systems recently announced that the AAA Iowa Cubs have installed Brivo ACS WebService at their home field, Principal Park, located in Des Moines, Iowa. The integrator for the project is Strauss Security Solutions of Urbandale, Iowa.

Principal Park, home to 72 Iowa Cubs games each season, sees more than 500,000 fans through its gates each year. Over the years, the stadium has undergone numerous expansions and improvements.

The most recent multi-million dollar upgrade was completed for the 2007 season in which new seats were installed throughout the ballpark, a new scoreboard and videoboard were installed, a fountain in right field was completed, bleacher seating was expanded in front of the scoreboard, and a giant kids' playland was put in on the first base concourse.

Prior to upgrading their access control capabilities, the Iowa Cubs relied on lock and key, motion detection sensors, and door ajar alerts. But as Jeff Tilley, director of stadium operations, explained, “We felt we had a certain number of doors where we wanted more information and more control; we wanted to better document who was coming and going and to limit access. So, we contacted our integrator, Strauss.”

Tilley and Jake Samo, Assistant Manager for Stadium Operations, shopped around and looked at a number of different access control systems. For the stadium, ease of use and a good fit for their management needs were their top priorities. Strauss provided a demonstration of the Brivo software on a laptop and as Jake Samo recalls, the feeling was, “Yep, that’s what we need.”

Both Tilley and Samo were impressed with Brivo ACS WebService’s ease of use on each of their own computers and now they use Brivo to control the main entrance doors to the stadium and access to the Cubs’ front office, the Facilities office where equipment and promotional items are stored, and to the Cubs owner’s personal office.

The Brivo system has been in operation for over four months and is now managing upwards to 100 employees, interns, and part-time help divided into approximately 12 groups with specific access days and times as well as access locations for each group. Each group’s specific access privileges track their function at the ballpark -- grounds crew, cleaning crews, front office interns, concessions, stadium operations, etc. Tilley and Samo have seen the level of flexibility the Brivo system offers, so they’re considering adding outside contractors to the access groups in the future. Tilley and Samo are also studying the many alert and reporting functions available to them to determine how to get maximum value from their new access control system investment.

So far, things are going just fine for Brivo and the Iowa Cubs.

“It’s great, if we ever have any questions, we call support and somebody from Brivo walks us right through it,” Samo said.

“Everything seems to be working out well,” Tilley said. “The Brivo system works just like the demo we got from Strauss. It’s everything we were looking for, we’re quite happy with what we have.”

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