Quick view:
- The opening of Steven D. Bell Hall in 2026 significantly expands UNC Chapel Hill’s business school campus, adding state-of-the-art classrooms, event spaces, and collaborative environments.
- To cover diverse areas—from massive divisible lecture halls to open study spaces and corridors—ClarkPowell integrated LEA Connect Series smart amplifiers.
- By utilizing LEA's IoT-enabled, cloud-connected amplifiers, system managers and integrators gain free, subscription-free remote monitoring and control from anywhere.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill began construction of a new academic building, Steven D. Bell Hall, in 2022, for the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Opened in 2026, Bell Hall is an innovative facility designed to accommodate the UNC Kenan-Flagler's programs and student population. It includes tens of thousands of square feet dedicated to classrooms, meeting rooms, and event spaces, all featuring modern, flexible learning environments for collaboration.
ClarkPowell was chosen to design and implement the AV infrastructure for Bell Hall. Richard Kessinger, a pre-sales engineer at ClarkPowell, played an integral role in the project and recognized that LEA amplifiers would be ideal to power the AV systems.
“We’ve found that LEA Connect Series amplifiers have less power waste and heat output than comparable 70-volt amplifiers,” said Kessinger. “That efficiency means more energy is dedicated to driving audio instead of heating the rack room. Combined with LEA’s six-year warranty, which reinforces long-term reliability and reduces risk over the life of the system, Connect Series amps deliver meaningful value from day one. A win all around.”
LEA amplifiers were deployed to power larger lecture halls, divisible rooms, spaces with multiple zones, and public areas such as cafeterias, open study areas, and corridors, allowing for background music and other uses. ClarkPowell installed a variety of LEA Connect Series amplifiers to address the diverse needs of the spaces in Bell Hall, including multiple Connect Series 352, Connect Series 702, and Connect Series 704 amplifiers.
All amplifiers in the Connect Series are professional-grade, IoT-enabled smart amplifiers suitable for installations of any size. They support both Hi-Z (70V or 100V) and Lo-Z, selectable by channel, and includes 96kHz DSP as a standard feature, providing a range of benefits that greatly enhance audio performance and system versatility. Additionally, LEA Cloud enables ClarkPowell to remotely control and monitor amplifiers from anywhere.
Bell Hall represents a major investment in academic infrastructure at UNC-Chapel Hill, increasing capacity and modernizing the educational experience for business students while fostering collaboration across disciplines.
“Using LEA's loudspeaker profiles decreases the processing requirements for the standalone DSPs used in the project, allowing us to save money by avoiding additional DSP hardware,” said Kessinger. “Next year, after the completion of the new building, UNC Kenan-Flagler plans to renovate all the classrooms in the existing McColl Building. We hope to incorporate more LEA amplifiers in this next phase, as they’ve been a perfect fit for a lot of our projects."
