Hi-Fi to High Tech

Mount Vernon company soars with the Hawks

by R.W. Clever

It would have been impossible for anyone attending any of the late July inaugural events at Seahawk Stadium to avoid the impact of a little company that does business just off Anderson Road in south Mount Vernon.

If you were there and neither blind nor deaf, you couldn’t have missed it. The 260 speakers dispersed around the stadium along with 841 television sets, the 80 flat-screen plasma monitors, the four large stadium display screens or the humongous screen on the north tower were the work of Dimensional Communications, Inc. (DCI).

The Mount Vernon company designed and built the massive, 300,000 watt system for the just-completed Seahawk Stadium.

The business that began as an audio sales adjunct to Paul Hagman’s dad’s cabinet shop 30 years ago has emerged as one of the top systems integrators in the country. The $1.7 million audio-visual system DCI installed at Seahawk Stadium in a two-year effort is state of the art. It is also DCI’s biggest contract to date.

Located in a stylish, but functional building just off of Interstate 5, DCI has been quietly, but steadily growing its business over the past three decades.

“It’s been a progression over the years,” said company President Paul Hagman. “We’ve never shied away from a project that tests the edge of our expertise.”

The firm’s resume is bulging with recent results from the company’s adventurous expansion of its proficiency.

In the past few years, before tackling Seahawk Stadium, DCI built complete sound systems for Husky Stadium, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, Boeing, Spokane Veteran’s Memorial Arena and the demonstration Microsoft Digital Home. It also built the rebroadcast system for the I-90 Mount Baker Tunnel in Seattle.

Not bad for a company that started out with a few guys selling stereos.

While local officials are hard at work trying to attract new high-tech industries to Skagit County, DCI is a homegrown firm that has proven to be technologically savvy, financially solid and long on ambition.

Skagit County was the incubator for the company’s growth. Dozens of local schools and governments operate audio-visual and telephonic systems designed and installed by DCI. As the size and complexity of DCI projects grew, so did the size and capabilities of the company.

Steve Olszewski, DCI’s vice president for sales and oft-time project manager, talks of the technological convergence of audio, video, telephony and computers.

Examples of this convergence can be found in the many schools in Northwest Washington now equipped with what Olszewski calls DCI’s comprehensive communications system. The system combines telephone, intercom, voice mail and media delivery, all controlled from the telephone keypad.

“We got some national recognition for our system in a newsletter by one of the manufacturers who supplies us,” said Olszewski.

Shortly thereafter DCI got a call from a school district in Rochester, NY, asking about the system. A deal was struck and the school district got its DCI system installed with the help of a local company in Rochester that was mentored by DCI, as Olszewski puts it, on how to perform the work.

Many of the big systems built by the company are controlled by computers built and programmed by its staff. Olszewski and Hagman emphasize that they are selling their design expertise in whole systems not just individual pieces of equipment.

Fresh out of college at 23, Hagman started his company in 1973 as a department of his father’s cabinet shop, Riverside Millworks. Then called Dimensional Sound Center, the shop sold name brand audio equipment and provided installation and service.

Dimensional incorporated as a separate company in 1975 and by 1977 had moved to a store in downtown Mount Vernon. There were two audio demonstration rooms a large sales floor and a service department.

Hagman points out that Jeff Louden, the man who ran the service department way back then, is still a key member of the Dimensional staff as are other employees who were there for the earlier growth of DCI. Rob Custer, the company’s vice president of operations, has been with DCI for nearly 20 years. Adding to the family feel of the company’s work environment is the presence of other members of the Hagman family on staff.

Olszewski helped take the company to the next level, focusing on building the commercial contract work that carried the company up a step at a time to the day when it could bid on and win the Seahawk Stadium communications system work. He says part of his job is to stay on top of new developments in technology and make sure that DCI is ready to incorporate it where appropriate.

To keep abreast of new developments in its areas of expertise, DCI heavily emphasizes training for its staff.

“We have a strong educational bias,” said Olszewski. “Training is an ongoing thing.”

Staff members earn their certifications on each system and are expected to become expert enough to, in turn, become trainers.

The company has a large audio-visual training room both for staff and for employees of clients who need to learn how to operate their new communications systems.

All designs are done on computer and printed out in the blueprint room, which houses thousands of plans for systems already built. The DCI building also has warehouse space to receive and store system components until needed and a millwork shop for building custom cabinets.

The company moved into the new, $1 million structure last January. It is a striking symbol of DCI’s continuing success in a highly competitive field.

DCI’s crowning achievement is its work on Seahawk Stadium, coming after a hard-fought bidding war against competitors from all over the country.

“The boys from Mount Vernon beat out the best on the planet,” proclaimed the ebullient Olszewski, who has been with the company for more than 25 years. Asked to explain the success of the company in a national marketplace Olszewski gets a bit emotional.

“You have to look at words like passion and believe that you can do it as well as anyone else,” he said. “We enjoy the challenge.”

“We don’t wake up every morning and do an NFL stadium,” said Olszewski. “Our thousands of customers have empowered us to do projects like this. Nobody does it alone. It is with the help, commitment and passion of everyone.”

The company had already done the work at Husky Stadium for the Paul Allen-owned Seahawks. But it also had a successful working relationship with the prime electrical contractor, Cochran Electric, on the Benaroya Hall project.

Benaroya presented special challenges since the very purpose of its existence was the sensitive treatment of sound.

DCI was part of a team working under the direction of internationally known acoustics expert Cyril Harris to create the sound systems for the hall that would be home to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

The company designed and built the sound reinforcement system, paging and audience recall, production intercom, listening assistance, recording facilities, the stage managers video and closed circuit security monitoring systems.

The Husky Stadium system was a dress rehearsal for the Seahawk Stadium job with 110,000 watts of amplifier power, 130 speakers in 60 locations and 44 channels of custom programmed digital signal processing.

The wattage was tripled in the new stadium.

What’s next? Hagman says he expects that his company will continue to grow and test the limits of its expertise. Olszewski is undaunted by the complexity of the massive systems now being designed and installed by DCI. The one-time hi-fi salesman says he looks forward to the challenge.

Not bad going for the little stereo shop that was born in Dad’s cabinet shop some three decades ago.