A Historic Building Reinvented
For almost 100 years, the Morton Salt complex has been an iconic part of the Chicago skyline. The facility was designed to house the packaging and distribution operations of the Morton Salt Company. Many branding authorities name the Morton Salt Girl and the slogan “When It Rains It Pours®” one of the greatest branding triumphs of all time. Like the brand, the unique building—with the recognizable logo painted on its roof—could be counted on to greet you driving into the city. However, when operations ceased in 2015, the space became vacant and began to fall into disrepair. Then Chicago’s 16 on Center (16OC), who operates other Chicago music venues including Thalia Hall and Empty Bottle, joined forces with local developer Blue Star Properties, R2, and Sky Deck, to transform the Morton Salt building into a multi-purpose creative hub that including music performance venues, while keeping the historic character of the space, including the branded roof.
Now known as The Salt Shed, the venue welcomed audiences in 2022 to the outdoor concert stage as the interior space continued to be fit out. This spring, the interior space has now opened and has already hosted a number of national music acts. 16OC worked with Upstaging to realize the new performance space. Upstaging provided the performance and house lighting as well as the power and controls infrastructure. They also handled the systems integration to ensure the two venues—inside and outdoors—exceeded the needs of bands coming to play the Chicago market. The Salt Shed is an excellent example of adaptive reuse, so to learn more about this project PLSN spoke with Account & Project Manager, Steve Wojda of Upstaging and The Salt Shed’s Director of Production, Tim Schoen.
Location, Location, Location
“We did about 13 shows outdoors last August and September,” says Schoen, Salt Shed’s Director of Production. “We have a 5,000-person capacity for the outdoor venue and are preparing for a semi-permanent outdoor stage. This past February we had an incredible opening of the indoor venue with Iggy Pop and The Roots. We’ve also had Phil Lesh & Friends in for two nights; we have a lot of national and international acts coming to play The Salt Shed. We’re right on the Chicago River overlooking the beautiful downtown Chicago skyline. It is a really great venue to perform and to be in the audience.”
The venue’s location offers more than spectacular views of the skyline, which it certainly does, it is a unique vantage point to be in the audience facing the outdoor stage as the downtown Chicago skyline sparkles in the evening. Being downtown means it is an easy venue to reach from home or work, and it’s also close to the expressway so people don’t need to tackle going through the city traffic to get to The Salt Shed. For acts coming into the space, there is an easy to deal with loading dock. “The truck dock is about 10’ behind the stage, inside the building,” explains Upstaging’s Wojda. “It’s easy to load-in, it’s heated and air conditioned. It’s going to be nice work there. I could see that they’ll probably end up doing some shows inside while there’s outside things going on at the same time. There’s a lot of space and convenience that makes it work well.”
Building Out the Site
While the site was still under construction, the Upstaging team came in to do demos and provide some ideas for the lighting systems. Since Upstaging is also a rental house, in addition to offering systems integration, The Salt Shed could get going quickly with the outdoor space while they considered more permanent decisions. “At first, we ended up putting some temporary lighting towers in just to light the site up,” says Wojda. “Then as we were able to get the gear in and get it installed, we started putting in the permanent lighting outside. We lit the whole outside courtyard area and the whole entrance area to the outside venue. We used Lumenpulse architectural fixtures all outside. It was fun to get a chance to do architectural lighting on a project like this.”
In the Spotlight
When it came time to pick fixtures for the performance lighting, the Upstaging team, in consultation with The Salt Shed staff, led by Schoen, went with a choice of IP65 rated units for the house inventory so they could be used for concerts both inside and outside. In terms of performance lighting, they went with all Elation Professional products. “We tried to come up with a fixture package inside that would be great to do all the inside stuff, have the punch that they would need,” explains Wojda. “Some of those lights are going to be used as followspots and have good punch from the throw distances to the stage in the indoor venue. Then some of those lights can go outside and be a good outdoor festival rig at other times. As of now, they’re not going to have shows both inside and outside at the same time. The main thought right now is that the same fixture package will be handling both inside and outside performances.”
Upstaging and Schoen worked with Rob Ludwig of Five Lakes Marketing, the Elation Professional sales representative, and Joel Furmanek, Director of Controls Sales for KSA Lighting & Controls, the sales representative for ETC and Lumenpulse, on making the fixture and lighting control selections for the Salt Shed. ““They’ve both been very supportive,” says Wojda. “They were also very responsive to our needs for demo gear. Joel helped us a lot on picking out the actual architectural fixtures and Rob from Five Lakes got us a variety of Elation lights to try in the venues. We did a lot of different demos with the client. In the end, we ended up with all Lumenpulse for the house and architectural lighting and all Elation for the performance lighting in both spaces.” As for what drew Schoen to the Elation line of products, he explains, “The price for what you get from the Elation equipment is great, but they also have a great line of IP65 rated lights and we wanted to mix and match. We all liked the fact that they had a whole line of IP65 rated and non-IP65 rated products that we could easily mix and use on the stage. What the line of Elation products can do is very impressive. And from a service point of view, it is great to have all one manufacturer.”
For control Wojda says, “We’re using a grandMA3 to control the stage lighting and an ETC Paradigm control system for the architectural lighting. We did set the data system up so either control system could control either lighting system. The house crew can switch over at any point they want to. We also made sure to put data ports everywhere; you can always find someplace to plug in the console, or a node as needed.” Upstaging also added power drops all over to add more lights when needed. “We designed the whole venue with power outlets so they could easily add more lights,” Wojda points out. “They are planning to use the space for events and small conventions, so easy access to power was a requirement. There is more than enough power. We have 748 channels of ETC Sensor IQ Intelligent Breaker Panels in the space to control the power distribution.” Power is distributed well around the venue. For the indoor stage there’s 200A for audio stage left in the wing along with a 400A auxiliary panel. Then stage right has a 400A lighting disconnect and the house system is on a separate 400A service. Schoen is pleased, commenting “We’ve got power everywhere and that’s good. We also have a control network everywhere throughout the entire house. We can send and receive signal and power wherever we need. That is going to be important for us.”
World-Class Venue
For Schoen, there were two mantras that he held onto from the owners and investors, “First, to make this a world-class venue. That’s why we brought in people like Upstaging, Reed Rigging, and OSA for audio. That’s why we have a full Elation rig and an L-Acoustics rig. Bringing in such good partners to help us with the systems integration was very important and key. The other mantra was to make the space modular. Everything can be struck very easily. We can accommodate either a touring act’s rig or whatever other space rentals might want or need. We can size the stage differently if necessary; we can size the house differently. We can strike the lighting rig very quickly and easily.”
Since Salt Shed’s management didn’t want to give up seats for followspot positions, Wojda provided a FollowMe remote followspot system for the venue. “The FollowMe system is a great solution as they can pick the best light and best position to use as a followspot rather than have dedicated followspot positions in the house,” says Wojda. The FollowMe system has a big fan in Schoen, who says “It’s fantastic. The venue is rather large, and we were looking around for a good platform for traditional followspots, which we didn’t have a lot of great spots. We were going to have to chew up a lot of seats to create positions. Having the FollowMe system allows us to free up real estate on the ground. We’re lucky enough to have Upstaging who basically created a tour pack for us; we can literally place it wherever we need. Depending on the footprint of the touring act, we can go offstage, in our wings; it doesn’t matter. We could go in a hallway; we could go in a broom closet and still be able to operate the followspots.” For Wojda, the FollowMe choice was like all the decisions for the various elements of the system at The Salt Shed, he notes, “We wanted to try to make sure that it was as user-friendly as possible for anybody to walk in and do a show. It needed to be a venue for all levels of acts and events to come into easily.”
Reliable Infrastructure
The venue used a portable Stageline stage for the first summer’s outdoor shows, however Wojda says, “They have now purchased from us a permanent Tomcat ground supported roof structure that’s going to be installed at the beginning of June. That will be a 50’ x 45’ stage with sound wings and steel trussing for the verticals to increase the load capacity. It will be anchored into concrete with the pillars all bolted down. It made more financial sense for them to buy a structure. The Tomcat structure will stay up year-round; they could even lower the roof and make it a beer garden during winter festivals.”
For the indoor stage, The Salt Shed purchased a 50’ x 32’ x 4’ high SteelDeck platform stage for performances. 16OC did add structural steel to increase the loading so they can handle tours with video walls and such. Reed Rigging installed 32 motor points. “Reed Rigging installed all of the motors for the system,” states Wojda. “Everything has got a load sensor so they can keep track of how much every load weighs, because there are limitations of the loads on the roof structure. After all, it’s a 100-year-old steel structure building. They have a very nice, computerized motor-control system from Motion Labs where they can track all of the loads throughout the system. All the motors are inverted so if they needed to lose their lighting rig, if another show came in with their own, they could potentially use the motors in the house.” Over the stage and the trussing, all the power and data are distributed throughout the ceiling. “Everything’s distributed,” describes Wojda. “I have Socapex and data drops from the ceiling down to the lighting trusses. Where each motor point is, we put a Socapex and data connectors so that way we can drop it straight down with the motor pick. Currently, there are eight 40’ long trusses for lighting in the indoor venue space.”
Schoen feels that Upstaging was absolutely the right partner for The Salt Shed. “Working with Upstaging has been fantastic,” he states. “Steve’s been great as our rep, and they have helped us design everything. I was tasked with making a world-class venue, so I had to bring in a world class lighting and staging company and that is Upstaging. They have been really invaluable.”
Having worked in a number of different entertainment venues, Schoen is prepared to helm production at the new “old” venue, knowing that there are always surprises lurking right around the corner. “It’s a 100-year-old building,” he notes. “I think the fact that the integrators have been excellent and really stepped up on this project has helped. They rode the waves with us and were really fantastic. The fact that we were able to leave the bones of the structure and give it a lot of character was fortunate, it is a real nod to Chicago architecture. We didn’t slap any paint over it; we left it all raw. We even left what was done while it was vacant by various graffiti artists, we left it up as part of the character of the building; that vibe that a number of venues have; it’s kind of an aesthetic through line that we are really proud of.” The Salt Shed is now looking forward. “We have some really eclectic bookings and look forward to shake out the venues with the events and performances coming up,” concludes Schoen. “Then going into the summer with both the indoor and outdoor spaces, this is going to be a ton of fun.”
Upstaging Team
- Account Manager/ Project Manager: Steve Wojda
- Senior Account Manager: John Huddleston
- Sales Manager: Mike Creager
- Project Manager: Joe Lifshitz
- Head Install Tech: Brian Shipinski
- Install Techs: Brian Alm, Josh Norek, Tyler Weinmen
Gear
Performance Lighting
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 (Mode 2) Console
- 1 ETC Paradigm Architectural Lighting System
- 748 ETC Sensor IQ Intelligent Breaker System Channels
- 1 FollowMe Remote Followspot System
- 18 Elation Proteus Lucius IP
- 4 Elation Artiste Monet
- 10 Elation Proteus Rayzor 760 IP
- 4 Elation DTW Blinder 700 IP
- 32 Elation FUZE PAR Z60 IP
- 12 Elation FUZE MAX PROFILE
- 12 Elation FUZE MAX SPOT
- 8 Elation Protron 3K Color Strobe
- 65 Lumenpulse Lumenfacade Nano Horizontal
- 1 Master FX Mystic Hazers
Site Lighting
- 43 Lumenpulse Lumenquad Large
- 8 Lumenpulse Lumenquad Grande
- 8 Lumenpulse Lumenblade Small
- 8 Lumenpulse Lumenblade Medium
- 8 Lumenpulse Lumentech Pole
