83.9 F
San Fernando
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Light Firm Sees Bonanza in Pandemic

As live events around the country remain on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, venues are finding an opportunity to remodel or refurbish old fixtures. That’s good news for Valley architectural and industrial designer Gerald Olesker, who told the Business Journal he’s doing more projects for nightclubs and concert venues than ever.Olesker is founder and chief executive of ADG Lighting, a boutique manufacturer of lighting fixtures and other home furnishings with a factory in Chatsworth and office headquarters in Agoura Hills. It employs 18 people.Much of ADG’s club work comes through a relationship with one of the country’s premier venue operators: Live Nation in Beverly Hills.“Some nightclubs are taking advantage of being able to come in, do reconfigurations or reboots. We are super busy,” Olesker said. ADG’s roster of pandemic-time club projects includes the Hollywood Palladium, a historical 1940s Gordon Kaufman building on Sunset Boulevard for which ADG is engineering chandeliers with what Olesker described as “reflective glazed cylinders and a nod to the Hollywood noir aesthetic”; the Belasco Theater downtown, for which ADG is making “cloudlike” light shades inspired by Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny for the venue’s dancefloor; and HiFi, a newly built club co-owned by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban in Dallas’ Design District. “We did the private club room with 8-plus-foot-diameter stacked golden rings, kind of reminiscent of a record stack but getting smaller and smaller, like a speaker cone,” Olesker said. “It looks like a million bucks.”Olesker explained these projects are done in partnership with Bandit Lites, which provides the electrical work and effects programming that result in the “thumping lights” necessary for a club environment.“We incorporate their technology into our fixtures,” he added. An uptick in club and concert hall work isn’t the only way ADG has seen business grow during the pandemic.“On the residential side, it’s gangbusters,” Olesker said. “We’ve gotten 65 projects this quarter and growing.”He said being a small  manufacturer with expertise in architectural design gives ADG the ability to thrive when others have struggled. “We can pivot very easily,” he said. “We can have an uptick when there’s a downturn.”

Featured Articles

Related Articles