Attraction Maker Busy in Pandemic

With no crowds at theme parks, LA ProPoint should be out of work. But the attraction design and manufacturing firm in Sun Valley has found work in related industries and kept busy with three lengthy projects.“The lion’s share of our work normally is theme park work,” President Mark Riddlesperger said in an interview with the Business Journal. “Obviously, that is not happening now. We have been able to pivot and keep ourselves busy with theater inspections, equipment upgrades and repair projects.”Theaters and performing arts venues have used the downtime created by the pandemic to make improvements to their facilities, he explained.

“There are no live performances going on, so a lot of theaters and live performance venues are taking this time to do their upgrades, improvements, safety inspections and so on,” Riddlesperger said.That includes the 500-seat Mandell Weiss Theatre on the campus of the University of California – San Diego.LA ProPoint replaced the counterweight rigging system, installed a new fire safety curtain and built hatches into the overhead structural steel system supporting the rigging system.

“It’s a big theater,” Riddlesperger said. “So the demolition and the reinstallation was a significant amount of work for us.” The company also finished work on two projects from pre-COVID-19 days.At SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, it spent a year designing an automated truss lighting system and another year on the fabrication and installation.

Riddlesperger called the project one of the most difficult the firm has ever worked on because of the scale and size of the equipment, the amount of coordination with other trades working on the stadium and the pressure to meet the deadline of finishing in time for football season in September last year.The big challenge was no overhead access to the truss, so all the work had to be done by workers in harnesses attached to ropes.

“This was grueling, and it went on for months and months,” Riddlesperger said. “Meanwhile, the rest of the stadium is being built around us.”Another project that pre-dated the pandemic was at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures next to Los Angeles County Museum of Art on the Miracle Mile.

There LA ProPoint installed masking systems, project screens and other automated equipment in two theaters. That work wrapped up in the last month.“It is amazing we have been so lucky to have had these projects to fall back on during this really difficult time for everybody, especially small business,” Riddlesperger said.