This article originally appeared in the July/August issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY
The Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex is a 28-acre entertainment complex built on four historic Hudson River piers. Opened in 1995, Chelsea Piers features a variety of sports facilities, including rock climbing walls, batting cages, ice rinks, a golf driving range, a gymnastics center, a bowling center, indoor turf playing fields and basketball courts, a 150,000-square-foot health club, pro shops, TV production studios, marina, restaurants and more.
Stuart Sheinbaum, vice president and director of communications for Chelsea Piers, identified the need for a single business telephone system to handle the entire 28-acre facility; improved communication with direct-extension dialing, intercom, and paging across the entire facility; the ability to handle 20,000 average monthly incoming calls;
unified communications – including caller ID, call history, and screen pops integrated with salesforce.com and the health club database – for the sales team; emergency support with battery backup and alarms; remote centralized management for adds, moves and changes; the ability to report trunk and port usage and track incoming/outgoing call volume; support growth over time; and provide an immediate return on investment and ongoing cost savings.
Chelsea Piers turned to Tele-Dynamics Voice & Data of New York City. Tele-Dynamics has been an Authorized Toshiba (News 
- Alert) Dealer for nearly 30 years. Jerry Pullman, vice president of operations, and Robert Pullman, CEO, recommended Toshiba’s Strata CIX IP business telephone system to meet Chelsea Piers’ needs. Chelsea Piers has been a Tele-Dynamics and Toshiba customer since 1993. In addition, when Chelsea Piers searched for an additional phone system for its new 300,000-square-foot sports complex in Stamford, Conn., it looked at several options, and once again chose Toshiba and long-time vendor Teledynamics to do the job.
Installed by Tele-Dynamics Voice & Data, Chelsea Piers’ Toshiba business telephone system consists of a Strata CIX1200 business telephone system, which provides telephone capabilities for five locations covering 28 acres, including offices, sports facilities, restaurants and more; more than 350 Toshiba telephones on site; a Strata Media Application Server; Call Manager for unified communications, plus screen pops integrated with salesforce.com and CSI (News - Alert) database for the sales team; and Network eManager for centralized remote management of all systems.
As a result, Chelsea Piers now has a single business telephone system for its five cost centers across 28 acres. All five locations share a centralized voice mail system and low cost T-1 service as well as easy extension dialing throughout all locations.
With the Strata CIX1200, Chelsea Piers also improved internal and external communications with four-digit dialing, intercom and paging services across the entire 28-acre facility. In addition, incoming calls can be routed to a live operator, so no call ever goes unanswered.
Using Toshiba’s Network eManager remote administration tool, Chelsea Piers’ IT team members can now remotely manage the entire telephone system from their laptop or desktop computers. They can easily make adds, moves and programming changes remotely for all five venues.
“Together, Toshiba and Tele-Dynamics delivered on our top three goals: standardization on an affordable, reliable platform; reduced business telephone costs; and the ability to self-administrate,” says Sheinbaum. “It’s a winning combination.”
Jon Nelson is product marketing manager at Toshiba Telecom.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
