Guest OpEd by Adrienne Reitz, Senior Marketing Communications Manager, CornellCookson
The effects of COVID-19 are transforming all aspects of life and business.
As more and more shops, restaurants, bars and other hospitality and retail businesses shutter for safety reasons or due to stay-at-home restrictions on non-essential businesses, many need long-term security solutions for their buildings and property.
Some businesses have turned to a do-it-yourself approach: boarding up glass windows and doors to prevent theft and looting.
Others have hired professional boarders – companies that specialize in boarding up businesses, homes and other buildings in the face of natural disasters and now pandemics.
The problem is, plywood and 2x4s don’t truly offer much in the way of security, as intruders or burglars can pull them down in seconds using simple household tools.
And moreover, boarding up a business can have the unintended effect of making the building and its area look neglected or unsafe.
For surrounding businesses that do remain open, especially upscale and luxury stores, this can make customers uncomfortable or unwilling to make the trip to that area of town.
(See SteelWeave™ Metal Mesh Grille which complement and enhance any building’s design while still providing security. Made of a woven type 316 stainless steel mesh material, it exudes elegance while the multiple patterns transform a standard security grille into a piece of rolling art. Courtesy of Cornell Iron Works, Inc. and YouTube.)
“There is a perception out there that boarding up businesses is bad for a number of reasons,” explained Heather Bender, Strategic Marketing Manager, CornellCookson.
“But one big one is that patrons may perceive that the business is located in a high crime area and may not be safe.”
“This is a direct correlation to the broken window concept, a theory that states visible signs of crime creates an environment that encourages further crime and disorder.”
One way to ensure protection of retail, restaurant and hospitality properties while maintaining clean visuals is by installing rolling doors, grilles and other high-security products that can be hidden in the building façade or ceiling when not in use.
Remind your clients that as active security measures, these are far more likely to keep their facilities safe because they provide security on demand.
They last for years, can be called into service in seconds (compared to the time and energy to commission a boarding company), are made of high-quality materials and many are made right here in America.
Plus, these products also have a host of other applications when it comes to building safety and security in the time of COVID-19.
We’ve explored some of them below.
Specifying the Right Grille or Door for the Right Application
Instead of allowing clients to rely on sheets of plywood, security professionals should help building owners understand the importance of installing coiling products on the inside or outside of glass windows and doors.
Solutions for Retail
“There is a perception that for a coiling product to be considered ‘high security,’ it has to be bold and in your face,” said Bender.
“But that’s not true. You can install an aesthetically pleasing rolling grille on the inside of a window or door.”
“The storefront will still look great from the outside but there is high security hiding just behind the glass and out of sight of passersby during business hours.”
“Plus, because grilles offer great visibility, passersby can still window shop when the store is closed – a win-win for businesses.”
If the client prefers, rolling doors and grilles can be installed on the outside of the window or door to protect the glass and obscure merchandise or visual access to the interior.
Solutions for Parking
There is also a growing variety of compact security grilles that feature extremely small headroom requirements.
This allows specifiers to install these products in tight spaces where there is little ceiling space or overhead room for a standard size grille.
These products are especially important for protecting parking garages in downtown retail areas because they look great, operate quickly and efficiently, and accommodate the latest ADA van clearance requirements for garages.
These types of grilles can also be used in retail or non-parking applications where headroom is a constraint.
Solutions for Healthcare
“In the healthcare space, there are a host of standard and high-performance rolling doors and grilles that provide security,” said Bender.
“Some solutions offer basic levels of security for storing vital equipment such as personal protection equipment (PPE).”
“More advanced rolling doors protect against forced entry to help safeguard critical openings in pharmacies, laboratories and other infrastructure areas in the time of a pandemic.”
Examples of standard doors can be found on two hospital ships currently deployed to treat COVID-19 patients in New York City and Los Angeles.
The USN Comfort and USN Mercy utilize rolling doors on their top decks to safely store equipment and medical supplies when not in use.
Traditional hospitals and healthcare facilities have similar needs and more. For example, in-house pharmacies and dispensaries are often targeted by thieves, including employees, due to extensive stockpiles of pharmaceutical drugs.
Therefore, it’s important that these facilities utilize the latest in forced-entry security, including rolling doors and grilles.
Additionally, as behavioral healthcare needs become more complex, some manufacturers have designed rolling doors for life safety and security all types of patients.
Special anti-ligature counter doors made specifically for exam rooms allow hospitals and other healthcare facilities turn normal rooms into behavioral health rooms.
This is critical for behavioral healthcare patients who need to be tested for COVID-19 and may pose a threat to their own safety.
Anti-ligature doors can be deployed with the touch of a button, which allows exam rooms to be quickly turned over to rooms optimized for behavioral health patients, then changed back to a standard exam room after the patient is seen and the space is sanitized.
Rely on the Knowledge of Safety and Security Product Manufactures
“Regardless of a building or business owner’s needs, it’s important that security professionals guide them with professional advice and seek solutions that will help protect against theft without making a building or area look unsafe and require a ton of advanced and materials to implement,” concluded Bender.
Therefore it is crucial for specifiers and security professionals to remain abreast of the most secure products available on the market at any given time.
Contact your local rolling door and grille sales rep, seek out additional information about third-party tested and certified products, and do your due diligence when it comes finding the best combination of coiling products to protect your client’s biggest investments.
About the Author
Adrienne Reitz, serves as Senior Marketing Communications Manager, at CornellCookson.
An accomplished communications professional, Reitz combines a love of words, an obsession for detail, and a passion for getting it right for a worldwide network of dealers and architects.
To Learn More, please visit cornelliron.com.
CornellCookson Takes Two in the 2019 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program
CornellCookson
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Best Critical Infrastructure Protection Solution
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EntryDefender™ Door
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EntryDefender™ High Performance Doors provide Security for critical infrastructure facilities.
(Safe room design no longer has to be challenging. StormDefender™ gives you ICC 500 compliance with automatically locking doors that recess into the ceiling, giving you more open designs than ever before. Courtesy of CornellCookson and YouTube.)
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Best Access Control & Authentication Solution
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StormDefender® Door
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StormDefender® Safe Room Doors are engineered for the ultimate in life safety protection for tornado rooms and safe rooms.
The Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program is specifically designed to honor distinguished government and vendor solutions that deliver enhanced value, benefit and intelligence to end users in a variety of government, homeland security and public safety vertical markets.
The Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards is the preeminent U.S. Homeland Security Awards Program highlighting the most cutting-edge and forward-thinking security solutions coming onto the market today, to ensure our readers have the information they need to stay ahead of the competition, and keep our Nation safe – one facility, street, and city at a time.
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American Security Today’s comprehensive Annual Homeland Security Awards Program is organized to recognize the most distinguished vendors of physical, IT, port security, law enforcement, and first responders, in acknowledgment of their outstanding efforts to ‘Keep our Nation Secure, One City at a Time.’
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Why American Security Today?
The traditional security marketplace has long been covered by a host of publications putting forward the old school basics to what is Today – a fast changing security landscape.
The traditional security marketplace has long been covered by a host of publications putting forward the old school basics to what is Today – a fast changing security landscape.
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The AST Digital Publications is distributed to over 75,000 qualified government and homeland security professionals in federal, state and local levels.
‘PROTECTING OUR NATION, ONE CITY AT A TIME’
AST Reaches both Private & Public Experts, essential to meeting these new challenges.
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CornellCookson, a division of Clopay Corporation, is a leading rolling door and grille manufacturer with facilities in Goodyear, Arizona and Mountain Top, Pennsylvania.
With history reaching back to 1828, CornellCookson product solutions can be found in stadiums, distribution facilities, hospitals, hotels and museums, as well as a variety of other facilities where reliability, security and life safety is vital.
CornellCookson products are available through a worldwide network of more than 700 professional dealers.
For more information, please visit www.cornellcookson.com.
For more information about advertising opportunities with American Security Today, please contact Michael Madsen, AST Publisher at mmadsen@americansecuritytoday.com.
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