Client: Verizon Wireless
Project Services: Land Survey, Civil Engineering, Schematic Design, Design Development & Construction Documentation, Utility Coordination, Permitting / Municipal Approvals, Environmental Services.
A venue only works if it can handle its crowd, and today that includes handling what the crowd’s phones are doing. Ticketing, concessions, wayfinding, media, and basic safety communications all run over wireless service now, which means network capacity has become an operational requirement for any venue hosting large numbers of people, not an amenity. What changes from venue to venue is how that demand shows up. A stadium needs it every day it is open. A one-weekend festival needs it for exactly one weekend, on a site that has to return to normal the moment the crowd leaves. Costich works with Verizon Wireless to engineer the infrastructure behind that coverage, and the approach looks different depending on how the venue itself operates.
ESL Ballpark operates on a full season schedule, which means its wireless demand is constant rather than tied to a single date. Costich provided civil engineering and construction drawing support for a new Verizon Wireless facility built into the ballpark’s existing video board structure, an unmanned facility with its own associated utilities designed to improve wireless service throughout the stadium.
The scope covered site construction drawings for the antenna and ground equipment areas, equipment cabinet layout, concrete pad and pier details, grading and erosion control, electric and fiber routing, grounding plans, and equipment mounting coordination, incorporating multiple antenna sectors including 5G, C-Band/CBRS, panel, and Matsing equipment. Because ESL Ballpark is an active public venue owned by Monroe County, the design had to work around existing stadium features, access constraints, utilities, structural conditions, and visual considerations without interrupting how the venue actually operates day to day. Standalone infrastructure was the right fit here, since the venue’s demand for coverage never really turns off. The project was completed in 2026.
The Rochester Airshow turns an airfield into a temporary venue for one of the region’s largest single-weekend events, and its operational needs look nothing like a stadium’s. There is no year-round crowd to plan around, no existing infrastructure built for public gatherings, and no reason to leave anything behind once the event ends. Costich supported Verizon Wireless with a temporary wireless facility engineered specifically for the compressed footprint of the Airshow, coordinating equipment placement, power, and grounding to meet the site’s access and safety requirements for the duration of the show.
That is the core difference from a venue like ESL Ballpark. The airfield is not a venue in the everyday sense, it becomes one for a few days a year, and the infrastructure supporting it has to be deployed, operated, and removed on that same timeline, in coordination with airport operations and everything else happening on the same footprint during the event.
Canal Days turns the Village of Fairport into one of the region’s largest festival venues, drawing crowds along the Erie Canal for two full days before the village goes back to being a village. Costich supported Verizon Wireless with a temporary wireless facility sized to that surge in demand, sited, powered, and grounded within the footprint of the event in coordination with the Village of Fairport and the realities of a festival that closes streets and reshapes pedestrian flow for its duration.
It is a good example of how “venue” is not always a fixed piece of infrastructure. Fairport operates as a village the rest of the year and as a regional event venue for one weekend, and the wireless infrastructure supporting Canal Days has to respect both of those identities, showing up when the crowd does and disappearing when it doesn’t.
The same temporary setup also supports Fairport Music Fest, an event held in the same footprint months apart from Canal Days. Rather than engineering a new solution for each event, Costich designed a temporary facility that can be redeployed as is, which keeps costs and turnaround predictable for the client every time the site comes back into use.
ESL Ballpark, the Rochester Airshow, and Canal Days are three very different kinds of venues: a stadium that operates year round, an airfield that becomes a venue for one weekend a year, and a village that becomes one for two days. Costich’s work with Verizon Wireless across all three comes down to the same approach, engineering wireless infrastructure that matches how each venue actually operates rather than applying one standard solution everywhere. That means standalone facilities where the demand is constant, and temporary, fully removable facilities where the demand is not.
For venue owners and operators around Rochester and the greater Western New York market, that is the value Costich brings to telecommunications projects, civil engineering built around how a venue really functions, whether that is 81 games a season or a single weekend on the calendar.
