Access Control: CellGate Eliminates Access-Control Problems at Vanguard Crossing
The Vanguard Crossing Apartments in St. Louis, Mo., are a 202-unit, Class A-rated apartment community with 250 to 290 residents. There are two resident four-story buildings at Vanguard Crossing — one “B”-shaped (Building 1) and the other “L”-shaped (Building 2), with a four-story parking garage in between them.
Building residents park on the same floor of the parking garage that their apartment is located on. Then, they walk directly from the parking garage floor to the floor of their apartment. A shared indoor hallway in each of the two resident buildings leads to residents’ front doors.
In the summer of 2022, the access-control system in use at Vanguard Crossing was a self-contained keypad with strike lock that was utilized at eight ground-level building entrances, two gates at the community fenced pool and 12 resident-building entrances from the parking garage.
None of the 22 entrances was connected to a central access-control system for the assignment of unique credentials per resident and/or for centralized monitoring, which the client wanted. This meant that one primary code was utilized for all residents, and that code was regularly shared with non-residents.
In addition, because each entry was not wired to a centralized access-control box, property management had no historical records/logs that would detail activity at each entrance, nor by whom. This was also something they wanted.
There was no telephone entry or visitor-management system being utilized at the property at the time. If a visitor came to see a resident, the resident either (a) had to provide the shared code to the visitor in advance so they could gain access to the apartment buildings by entering the code at one of the secure doors or (b) contact the resident upon arrival via cell phone or text message so that the resident could then retrieve the guest at the entrance where they were waiting.
A CellGate OmniPoint wireless access-control system was recommended for all but two entry points. The two entrances not being secured with OmniPoint would now be utilized as the two new property-visitor entry points. Two Watchman WXL visitor-management access-control systems, also from CellGate, would be installed for those.
The equipment included one Cellular OmniPoint Gateway mounted on an elevator “doghouse” in the parking garage; 20 OmniPoint Entry Point Modules (EPMs), one at each entry point, including parking garage doors, ground-level entry doors and pool gates; and dual keypad/readers attached to the EPMs to be used with key fob credentials.
The entrances already had power and strike locks. Thus, installation of the OmniPoint system was extremely simple and cost-effective. OmniPoint utilizes LoRa technology to communicate from a Gateway to each EPM. LoRa transmissions can penetrate glass, metal and concrete, which is one of its key differentiators as compared to other wireless data-transmission options.
OmniPoint communicates from each Gateway back to CellGate’s TrueCloud portal using either a cellular LTE or Ethernet connection. Vanguard Crossing chose the Ethernet connection for that data-transport need.
With the new OmniPoint installed system, all residents were provided wireless fobs with their own unique, identifying code that would grant the user entry from all property entrance points they were allowed to utilize during designated times.
All wireless-fob access attempts are now recorded in CellGate’s TrueCloud portal, including information about date, time, entry point and fob used.
In addition, prop-open notification alerts were set up to monitor each entry point, notifying property managers whenever a door was left open for more than three minutes. This allowed the property manager on duty to immediately address areas where security might be at risk because of the open entrance, empowering them to act accordingly.
TrueCloud also allows the property manager to review historical logs of entry-point usage and access attempts, giving property management much greater visibility into resident activity.
Two cellular-based CellGate Watchman WXLs were installed at the primary entrances of Building 1 and Building 2. Both Watchman WXL units came with color touchscreen telephone entry and livestreaming video to allow visitors to contact residents upon their arrival. And both units also included access control and, thus, worked with the existing fobs that the property had given each resident.
Because the two Watchman WXLs are also administered via the TrueCloud portal, the Vanguard Crossing property managers now utilize the same administrative system to facilitate both visitor management and access control for the property.
