$4M AV/broadcast envelope on a 310,000-square-foot, 7-floor, 90-room K–12 campus at 586 River Avenue, the Bronx. Designed by SOM, opens to 2,400 scholars in August 2026. AV Design Lead via Align Communications, 30-day redesign window.
Success Academy Charter Schools is the largest charter network in New York City. Their flagship Bronx campus — 310,000 square feet at 586 River Avenue, designed by SOM, slated to open August 2026 to 2,400 K–12 scholars — was conceived as a “School of the Future.” State-of-the-art STEM labs, broadcast-capable performance and athletics spaces, classroom AV in every room, and an AV/broadcast envelope budgeted at $4 million within the larger $12M institutional commitment.
By late 2023 the AV design needed a redesign. I came in via Align Communications as AV Design Lead Consultant with a 30-day window to restructure the bid documents, the BOM, and the room-level AV scope across all 7 floors and 90 rooms.
30-day pass on the AV design across all 7 floors and 90 rooms. Modernized RFPs and the BOM templates — pulling Align’s AV practice up to a current-decade procurement standard. Strengthened the partnership with Extron on the underlying control / signal-flow stack, which de-risked the room-level operations for the school’s IT team for the long run. Wrote the room-level AV scope for classrooms, STEM labs, the broadcast-capable performance and assembly spaces, and the corridor digital-signage layer.
Beyond the technical scope, this was the engagement that took Align’s AV division from a $100,000 annual loss to profitability. The AV practice transitioned during this window from a full-time-employee installation model to a labor-partner model, with a national labor partner secured. The Success Academy redesign was the project that proved out that operating model.
Standardized AV-in-every-room with a unified Extron control/signal-flow backbone · room-control consistency for the school’s IT team to support at scale
Lab-grade display + capture · custom signal scope for STEM curriculum · room-level differentiation within the standardized backbone
Broadcast-capable assembly / performance space · athletics-facility AV with PA, scoreboard, and broadcast-tie-in capability
Align Communications · Vincent W. Allen as AV Design Lead Consultant · Nov 2023–Mar 2024