Lighting Store Springfield

WEST SPRINGFIELD — On a recent morning, ATC Audio Video Lighting owner Tony Caliento reflected on the business' humble beginnings in a basement workshop 30 years ago.

"We kept growing, " Caliento said, standing just outside the Myron Street showroom stacked with speakers and lit by multicolored stage lights and disco balls. "I never knew it was going to grow into this."

A musician, Caliento was drawn to live music, and the audio and lighting pieces of live shows caught his interest, he said. Before Comcast closed its professional audio division, Caliento worked for the company installing audio systems at large arenas and colleges and doing temporary setups for events.

In 1986, he went out on his own. For what starting an audio and lighting business lacked in glamour, Caliento said, it made up in personal fulfillment.

"I remember working solo in the first store on White Street in Springfield, which was 400 square feet, no air conditioning and heating that just about worked, " Caliento said in a statement announcing ATC's 30th anniversary. "We didn't care at the time - we loved what we were doing."

From there, ATC moved into a room so packed with equipment that some had to be moved out onto the sidewalk to get inside, according to Caliento. After several moves to increasingly larger storefronts, the company landed at its current location at 89 Myron St., just off Riverdale Street, in West Springfield.

As a walk-in retail store selling audio and lighting equipment, ATC is unique in New England, Caliento said in a statement.

"The retail store offers over-the-counter sales (and) service of anything you can think of that deals with audio, video and lighting, " an ATC statement says. "Another major part of the company's business is its huge audiovisual rental and production inventory. This gives the customer the ability to come in and rent simple items from a microphone up to major audiovisual production equipment and tech services."