The opening of Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in October 2006 was a realization of the dreams that art companies, art patrons and the Miami-Dade County community had harbored for decades. The Center is now a cultural nucleus for music, dance and theatre that serves regional arts companies and attracts performing artists and audiences from around the world. The $472 million, five-acre campus comprises three sites: an opera house complex, concert hall and public plaza. The culmination of 20 years of fundraising and planning, including a four-year design process and five years of construction, the Center produces diverse, world-class performances. It has transformed a declining downtown area, and it is spawning adjacent development of residences and businesses. The Center also offers state-of-the-art technology, such as multi-Gigabit wired and wireless networks, streaming video and simulcasts, and multilingual opera translations—all managed by a small IT department and built on a secure, integrated wired and wireless 3Com® network infrastructure.