“Noah’s in Lindon, Utah, is the first fully automated, multi-use building open 24-hour a day to the public” says owner and creator Bill Bowser. The $6.5 million building loaded with a basketball court, racquetball courts, billiard rooms, high-tech business conference rooms, and surround-sound theatre rooms are available by the hour to anyone for any purpose.
Owner and creator, Bill Bowser says “the whole idea is that we want it to be what you want it to be.” The four-story, 23,000-square foot, precast concrete building looks like an old barn with a modern twist. Landscapers planted ivy around the building so in two or three years the building would look like it has been there for centuries.
To create the wood texture, Eagle Precast, Salt Lake City, Utah, shipped in a barn wood formliner from an out of state supplier. They rotated the formliner in a pattern before the concrete was poured to ensure its natural look. Luckily, weathered barn wood is an exact match with the structural gray of the Precast concrete walls so Eagle didn’t need to add any color, says Jim McGuire, Eagle Precast.
But in this case the panels are not just for looks. The structural precast walls actually bear the weight of the rooftop ice-skating rink and support the whole structure to the footings. Gifford Briggs, project manager, Big-D Construction, Salt Lake City, Utah, says coordinating the panels with the steel to make the building structurally sound was probably the biggest challenge of the project. Builders and engineers had to use every inch of space within the 9,000-square foot footprint. Within those perimeters, the builder used 14,000-square feet of hard wood floors, 10,000-square feet of tile, and 3,000-square feet of clay brick tile on the roof, says Briggs.
While the panels were set in a week, the whole project took Big-D Construction nine months to finish. Briggs says the individuality of the 19 rooms is what took them so long. “It is more like a hotel because every room is like its own project,” he says. “Each room has its own bathroom. Each room has its own everything—electricity, thermostat, even a catering kitchen in some rooms.” His challenge was that couldn’t connect anything until everything was done.
The last thing to do was set up the automation system and Bowser actually did that himself. The system ties the building to the central command center where one person monitors the building and unlocks doors. There are no annoying customer service people, says Bowser. “You don’t need us and most people don’t want us,” he says. “If you did need help there is always the 800 number and a maintenance man to clean up your spills if you need it.”
Bowser came up with the idea for Noah’s 10 years ago when he owned his own automation company. He was hired to automate the cultural halls in churches owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to turn off the electricity in the evenings by a decent hour. He saw the range of activities the room was used for—from basketball to Christmas parties and wedding receptions—and realized that there had never been a building created for the public to use for whatever they wanted.
Bowser says Noah’s fills a niche in the “gathering market” that has been ignored for years. Since it opened in January, he has already seen it used for everything from high school graduations to weddings to 100 year old birthday parties. “We like to think of it as an extension of your house,” Bowser says. “You get to use the $130,000 worth of equipment when you have that big event for three hours for $100.”
“If I want to watch a ballgame and shoot pool, I don’t want a sports bar,” Bowser explains. “A sports bar is generally overpriced and you can’t hear the game anyway. I want exactly who I want in my experience, eating exactly what I want to eat.” Combine that with the efficiency of the online booking system and you have a cost-effective self served event, he says.
Noah’s instant popularity has sparked plans for another building this year in South Jordan, Utah, and six more Noah’s next year in Southern California, Phoenix, Denver and Seattle. Bowser is planning to have 18 Noah’s by 2010. “To begin with we want to spread all over the West,” he says. “But eventually we want hundreds of these buildings across the country.”
The first Noah’s building won the Associated Builders and Contractor’s (ABC) Excellence in Construction Award and the America’s Concrete Institute’s (ACI) Intermountain Chapter “Awards for Excellence in Concrete Construction.” For more information on Noah’s visit www.mynoahs.com.