Published June 2003

Elements
of surprise

Photo courtesy of Dillon Works Inc. Working with Callison Architecture of Seattle, Dillon Works turned the food court of Ala Moana Makai Market in Honolulu, Hawaii, into a tropical hideaway, complete with a canopy of faux bamboo and banyan tendrils, softly lit lanterns and torches.

Dillon Works’ creations turn ordinary space
into memorable experience

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Dancing clams, gargantuan steel flowers, a chorus line of animated Jelly Belly Beans — as Dillon Works’ tagline states, the company can design and fabricate “almost anything.”

Begun 18 years ago by Mike Dillon, a former Disney “Imagineer,” the Mukilteo-based company has built a reputation as an innovative creator of dimensional and architectural elements — elements that turn mundane space into a memorable experience.

Elements such as a 12-foot-tall bag of popcorn that stands in the lobby of a Toronto movie theater, shooting giant popped kernels 30 feet into the air.

Or a three-story centerpiece of fiber-optic lights and glass that resides in Carnival Cruises’ Casino Rouge in Louisiana.

Snohomish County Business Journal/ KIMBERLY HILDEN Dillon Works fabricated hundreds of these Harlequin heads for a cruise ship casino.

Or two 30-foot-tall wall sculptures of historic bronzes at the Seattle Bon Marche. Often, there isn’t a project precedent for Dillon and his staff of project managers, estimators, designers and craftspeople to reference, which makes the job risky — and fun, said Dillon.

“What we’re using is our knowledge base and a staff that enjoys problem solving, and that’s part of the fun of it — we don’t just do ‘art by the pound,’” said Dillon, who gained experience designing and building elements for Disney’s theme parks before starting Dillon Works in 1985.

At that time, the company operated out of his garage and was primarily creating props for photo shoots and sets for television commercials. By the early 1990s, however, that niche was being filled by digital enhancement and manipulation software.

Dillon decided to turn the challenge into an opportunity, transitioning the company’s focus toward creating more permanent elements, displays and interiors for malls, casinos, exhibits and other custom environments.

It’s a decision that has paid off for the company, whose client list has grown over the years to include FAO Schwarz, Hallmark, Jelly Belly Candy Co., LucasFilm Ltd., Nordstrom, Microsoft and the Seattle Mariners, not to mention architects, interior designers, mall developers and retail planners.

Now housed in a 30,000-square-foot, built-to-suit facility, Dillon Works has an on-site metal shop, wood shop, soft-goods shop, sculpt shop, mold shop and paint shop, and employs 30 full time during most of the year and up to 60 during times of peak activity.

At any given time, Dillon’s company is working on at least a dozen projects, whether it’s designing a suit for Ivar’s TV commercial clams or creating the columns and other interior elements for the new Tulalip Casino.

“His practice in the architectural business has really grown as the industry has seen what he can create, and the only reason he has been able to do that is he constantly thinks ‘How do I make this happen? How can I mobilize the right artists to realize the vision?’” said John Mason, an associate principal with Seattle-based Callison Architecture.

Callison has worked with Dillon Works on a number of projects, including interior elements for Ala Moana Makai Market (a mall in Honolulu, Hawaii) and ice-column carvings for Clackamas Town Center in Portland, Ore.

The latter project required Dillon Works’ sculpt shop to carve a full-size original in foam and then create a mold to fabricate multiple parts. The end result: 30-foot-tall carvings of Old Man Winter made of translucent fiberglass and lit from within to emphasize the translucent effect — creating a mystical atmosphere for visitors to enjoy.

“If you have something you want to communicate, (Dillon) can help you envision it, create it, value engineer it,” Mason said. “He’ll figure out a way to achieve the desired effect (with cost efficiency). That takes a lot of thought and creativity.”

To say that Dillon is a fabricator doesn’t do justice to all that he brings to the table, Mason added.

“His world is so much richer than that. It enables the designer to think outside the box with him. You want to go to his world, and the clients end up wanting to, too,” Mason said.

If Dillon’s workplace is reflective of his “world,” then it is a rich, imaginative place, indeed, where a 26-foot-long model of a paper airplane juts out of the building’s exterior, a pterodactyl hovers above the reception desk and a “Star Wars” battle droid stands at the ready.

In one conference room, a bear statue, with a television screen resting in its belly, towers over visitors. Along one wall are bins of various materials.

“A big part of our job is to explain to clients about different materials and how they work, and so we use this conference room kind of as a working room,” Dillon explained. “When we’re talking to a client about vacuum forming or fiberglass or that sort of thing, we’re able to show them examples of how those things work.”

Many of those clients come to Dillon Works thanks to word-of-mouth referrals, but the company also tries to keep a handle on industry trends, Dillon said.

What’s big right now?

Native American casinos, for one. “There is certainly more activity there, whereas six years ago it was more the casino riverboats,” Dillon said.

Another growth area is in new mall construction and mall remodeling or redevelopment, he said, noting that Dillon Works recently worked with Callison on Nordstrom’s Savvy Elements project, which called for the fabrication of more than 50 textured fixture panels, cast with custom-tinted translucent urethane.

The project also called on Dillon Works’ ingenuity to create chandeliers from individual strands of bead chain with rotationally cast translucent spheres, Dillon said, with each sphere cast with integral marbles, gold leaf and/or glitter.

Along with these trends, the company has seen an increase in activity in the home-theater market, where clients want to create an other-worldly environment in which to watch movies. Already, Dillon Works has designed a home theater to look like a control room in the Death Star, complete with twinkling fiber-optic stars.

“We’re working right now on a home theater for a Dallas, Texas, (client) that is going to look like the Nautilus submarine from ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,’” Dillon said.

It’s a challenge suited for a company that can design and fabricate “almost anything.”

For more information on Dillon Works, call 425-493-8309 or visit online at www.dillonworks.com.

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