The United States of StageDrop is a series highlighting customer success stories from a different state each week. This week's United States of StageDrop features the Sunshine State, Florida!

“To make and send disciples who love and live like Jesus” - that is the mission of Riverside Church, a Baptist (SBC) church located in Fort Myers on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The church focuses on creating relational environments for disciple-making rather than programs or classes; members meet regularly in small groups to support each other and grow together in their faith. In recent years, Riverside has also become a training center for other churches and groups wishing to implement the disciple-making church model.

Riverside Church has a long history serving the Fort Myers community since its origins in 1916, when founding members met in a wooden, one-room building of Edgewood School. Their current building was erected in 2001 on the church’s 80-acre campus on Daniels Parkway.

This past spring, Riverside decided to remodel their student ministry room. The space was in dire need of a complete overhaul after years of temporary upgrades and fixes, and it had no stage. “Our student space was kind of a 10-year-old pile of duct tape, years’ worth of duct tape solutions,” says Cody Franklin, Creative Arts Technical Director. “This is a space that we’ve wanted to remodel for the longest time.”

The room remodel involved taking the room back to a shell, keeping only the audio console, while everything else would be brand new. With the exception of design and trussing, the church kept most of the room’s construction in-house. When it came to planning for a built-in stage, concerns arose over building codes and the location of fire sprinklers - building a permanent stage would be more time-consuming and complicated than they desired. An easy solution evolved - install a heavy-duty portable stage that would give the room the same aesthetic as a built-in stage.

Franklin contacted StageDrop for a portable staging solution, sending in a quote request along with the technical drawings for the remodel. The design specified an irregular-shaped stage to accommodate a doorway on the backside, as well as a specific height requirement to allow for speakers underneath the stage. The church also desired a stage system that would last at least a decade. StageDrop put together a quote for a Biljax AS2100 portable stage system that fit the church’s vision, specifications and budget, and with a few slight modifications, the purchase was finalized.

The stage system Riverside Church purchased from StageDrop was composed of 23 Biljax AS2100 4’x4’ portable stage platforms, stage legs, leg bracing and a set of stairs to create a 12’D x 36’W stage (with cutouts for the rear doorway and front stairs). The Biljax AS2100 portable stage system features 4-foot square platforms with a black textured vinyl surface in an aluminum frame, supported by heavy-duty galvanized steel square tube legs with an adjustable rubber foot. Platforms and legs lock together easily with built-in mechanisms for tool-free setup. And since the stage system is completely modular, it’s easy to replace or add pieces down the road to expand the stage.

Once the stage arrived and it was time to set it up, Franklin and a small crew of students set to work. “I told the students who were putting the pieces together that it would take a professional 2 hours to assemble it, so let’s see if we can do it in a day. It took us 2 hours. It went together really easy,” he says.

Franklin speaks highly of the stage’s construction. “The Biljax is a better build quality of stage,” he says. “It functions like a mock permanent stage in its build quality which makes it really nice.” Another feature is the openness underneath the stage - since there’s 4 feet between legs, Franklin can use a mechanic’s creeper for easy access to run cables. He also installed J-hooks under the stage for cable management and built several custom recessed cable port boxes into the stage surface.

The student ministry room remodel project finished in September 2020, and the result is magnificent. The new stage looks like it was custom made for the room, and it provides a spacious platform for ministry and live music. The design includes an LED video wall behind the stage and stage lighting on overhead truss for a dramatic effect.

Riverside Church’s newly remodeled student ministry room has its grand opening next week for their first RSM Live service of the school year for middle and high school students. The church also plans to use the room for the young adult ministry, special events and for overflow during Sunday worship services, as the church’s membership is growing. “We’re trying to maximize that room,” Franklin says. “And that stage is definitely a part of that.”

StageDrop would like to thank Riverside Church for their business and for allowing us to highlight their church, representing Florida in this week's United States of StageDrop. We wish them and their congregation all the best.

Looking to add a new portable stage to your music venue? Check out our extensive selection of Portable Stages, or call or email us today for a free quote!

Based at the Jersey Shore in Forked River, NJ, StageDrop LLC is a leading provider of stock and custom portable stage systems, stage accessories, truss and event furniture to businesses and consumers nationwide. We specialize in delivering custom stage configurations for business, government, education, religious, fitness and nonprofit organizations. We offer free quotes with expert recommendations to fit our customers' specialized needs.