LV contractor is a force behind the scenes at DNC

Thursday, July 29, 2004 | 10:46 a.m.

Volumes have been written about Nevada's place in the political arena at this year's Democratic National Convention in Boston.

So it's only appropriate that when Sen. John Kerry takes the stage tonight to accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president that he do so on a stage that Las Vegans had a role in building.

Las Vegas-based GES Exposition Services is the general contractor for convention services at the DNC at Boston's Fleet Center and locally based GES employees have had key roles in the preparation for the event that is the next step in Kerry's bid to win the White House in November.

Joel Golbin, general manager of GES' trade show electrical division, Sallie Sargent, the senior director of corporate communications, and Bernie Adkins, director of national operations, which coordinates the marshalling of convention supplies, each put in long hours before and during the convention, with Golbin and Adkins planning to stick around for the dismantling of the event after it concludes.

"Working in Las Vegas, I thought I'd seen it all," said Adkins, who monitors materials that are received at a marshalling yard near the convention venue, weighs them and makes data entries before dispatching them to the show site.

"For most people who work in Vegas, it's almost like a paid vacation to go help out in other locations," she said. "But for this particular one, we're dealing with a facility that isn't a convention center. It's an arena, so it's designed more for people getting in, not freight getting in."

Adkins said one of the biggest challenges is organizing freight deliveries at a venue that has only two freight docks. One of those, she said, is in constant use by caterers, trash collectors and audio-visual presenters. The other is heavily scheduled to take deliveries of goods provided for delegates.

The other added challenge at this event: the ultra-tight security.

"There have been a few suspicious packages at the Fleet Center, but I haven't spent very much time there," she said.

Adkins has spent most of her time at the marshalling yard, where she has been stationed since July 22. Once the convention began, all materials coming into the marshalling yard were unloaded, then reloaded onto the contractor's own vehicles for delivery to the Fleet Center. Police escorts preceded and trailed all deliveries to the venue, she said.

In the days leading up to the convention, the marshalling process was an around-the-clock activity, not unlike preparations for major shows in Las Vegas like the National Association of Broadcasters convention or the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Once the show began, materials were moved in every day beginning at midnight. Now, she said, the work has slowed as the convention nears its conclusion.

Adkins, who has been with GES since 1988, said Bostonians apparently paid heed to warnings that traffic was going to be bad around the center because transit has been relatively easy, she said.

Adkins said she will stay on the job until Aug. 6, returning in time for the set-up of the International Baking Industry Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

GES, which will have 200 workers at the Boston venue at 3 a.m. on Friday, will have 72 hours to dismantle the site. That means moving 2,142 chairs and 816 tables and rolling up the 46,813 square feet of carpet and 5,385 linear feet of drapes as well as tearing down a 100,000-square-foot two-story media center and 17,000 square feet of media tents constructed atop train tracks.

Sargent was one of the fortunate Las Vegas GES workers who got to leave before the thousands of balloons were to fall in the climactic finale.

She has coordinated videotaping for an eight-minute documentary for the DNC as well as taping for GES' internal video magazine.

"It's all extremely impressive," said Sargent, who got a close-up view of some of the convention speakers, including former President Carter, and watched the television network crews prepare their broadcasts.

Sargent explained that the networks use the skyboxes at the Fleet Center -- the arena where the Boston Celtics basketball team and Boston Bruins hockey team play -- as their remote studios. Most of the other reporters are stationed at the media pavilion, which has flooring, air conditioning and power, and was built by GES crews.

Sargent, who has been involved in the set-up of professional sporting events, said she has been most impressed with the coordination of the limited space.

"It's a very intimate arena," Sargent said. "It's not a huge facility, but it's very space-challenged. The excitement of the people here is similar to the excitement of rooting for your team to win in the Super Bowl."

She said the request for the additional tent facility built over the railroad tracks came a month before the event and doing it amounted to a logistical miracle.

Sargent said Golbin, who splits his time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles for GES, coordinated much of the electrical work for the venue. She said he has had experience setting up for political conventions having worked on the DNC at Los Angeles' Staples Center arena in 2000.