WEBER WONDERS: Brothers create a versatile and imaginative firm

By MATT KOESTERS

SELLERSBURG — You probably don’t know about the Weber Group.

But if you’ve screamed as your roller coaster car careened down the first hill at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, admired the wilderness from a safe distance at the Louisville Zoo, shopped at Hollister Co., visited a relative at Twinbrook Nursing and Rehab Center or even cheered on a horse at Churchill Downs, chances are you’re familiar with its work.

You just don’t know it.

The end products of Weber’s work are as varied as its customers. On a given day, the design-build firm could be creating sculptures of wolves meant to look as though they were hewn from stone, plans for an apartment complex designed to resist the floodwaters of a hurricane or the world’s largest mint julep glass. Guinness lists the 2008 6-foot-tall mint julep monument built by the Weber Group for the Kentucky Derby as the biggest ever of its kind. “We’re one of Southern Indiana’s best-kept secrets,” said Penny Peavler, the group’s director of brand development.



BUILDING FROM WITHIN

On the outside, the Weber Group’s headquarters is nothing special. The dull-blue 35,000-square-foot steel building in the Sellersburg Industrial Park used to house a volleyball facility. Only two indications of the firm’s presence are apparent from afar: A handwritten-signature logo and a University of Kentucky flag beneath the American flag on the flagpole.

Every project has a story — or narrative, as it’s called in the architecture business — behind it. For the Weber Group, development takes more than just a nuts-and-bolts approach to complete a project. It takes creativity and imagination.

The Weber Group narrative is the story of two brothers, Tom and Donny, who grew up in West Louisville. The brothers both went to the University of Kentucky. Tom initially started college as a mechanical-engineering major. But when he saw what his younger brother and friends were working on in architecture classes, he decided to make the switch.

“I’d look at what they were doing and look at what I was doing, and I thought, ‘Man, this is a lot more fun than what I’m doing,’” said Tom Weber, now the company’s president.

Tom may have followed Donny Weber down the path to an architecture degree, but Donny stumbled into it. An artist since childhood, Donny said he didn’t know he wanted to go to college, much less become an architect. But the opportunity to earn a living as an artist attracted him to the profession.

But the path that Donny stumbled upon and Tom followed to open their business started not in Lexington or Sellersburg. It began in the woods of Tennessee, where the two took on their first project, building a vacation home in Red River Gorge. The two spent their first month on the job sleeping in a tent.

When the Webers reunited in 1983 after three years apart working for Louisville-based nonprofits, they did more conventional work. Small residential additions and small commercial jobs helped the Weber Group survive.

“As we survived, the jobs got bigger,” Tom Weber said.



THEIR KINGDOM AWAITS

The Webers tried to focus on commercial properties, but still worked on custom homes and residential additions until they were presented with the opportunity to work on the then-defunct Kentucky Kingdom.

The Webers sold their business to Kentucky Kingdom in 1985, and over the next 12 years, oversaw the expansion of the park from 12 acres to 65 acres, designing and building every roller coaster, concession stand and monument.

“It’s like going to graduate school in entertainment design,” Tom Weber said. “It was great for us, too, because not only did we design and build it, we lived with it. If it didn’t work, we heard about it.

“We learned a lot of great lessons operationally — what to do, what not to do, as far as durability and functionality.”



BRAVE NEW WORLD

In 1997, the park was sold to Premier Parks. Instead of sticking around, the Webers went back into business for themselves, using their experiences with Kentucky Kingdom to take on ambitious projects.

Today, the Weber Group possesses the tools and experience to fabricate, design and build just about anything. And it approaches each new challenge without fear.

“Most of the things we do, we’ve never done before,” Tom Weber said.

Much of what the Weber Group is asked to do requires a high degree of specialization. The company’s shop floor houses a welding shop, carpentry shop, spray room for paints and hard coats and a twin-table five-axis mill/router with a 360-degree laser scanner, a device that can cut virtually any shape fed to it by a computer.

For themed-entertainment structures, much of the work is still done by hand. The group employs a skilled crew of artists and carpenters, welders and designers to cut intricate shapes from foam and paint jobs that bring them to life.

Sometimes — as in the case of The Great Wolf Lodge, a chain of indoor waterpark resorts — the group is asked to help develop the brand, including new logos and characters. In other cases, the group is asked to take on an existing brand and protect it, as it has done for the Nickelodeon brand in Paramount-owned amusement parks.

The group’s resume has landed it jobs with some of the most prestigious clients, and until recent economic troubles, it looked as if the firm was about to land a job with the holy grail of the entertainment business.

“We thought we were going to work for Disney, and we went through this whole review process,” Tom Weber said. “It was like getting to be certified [to produce] angus beef with them.”

Word came that Disney had chosen the Weber Group for its upcoming projects, and the group was ready to celebrate. But at the last minute, Disney said the project was on hold for six months to re-evaluate viability.

“It was like getting to Christmas Eve and then Christmas didn’t happen,” Tom Weber said. “It’ll come back. We’ll get to do it.”

Though the group’s list of clients is long and filled with zoos, waterparks, amusement parks and arenas, the Webers still work on commercial properties. Donny Weber said the group relies on a diverse portfolio of projects.

And in the current economic downturn, the Weber Group is just fine sticking to its less spectacular beginnings.

“We never really gave up our roots, because diversity adds stability to your business,” Donny Weber said.

But there are those who find the Weber Group’s work with more common projects spectacular, like April Duval, director of the Council on Mental Retardation in Louisville.

In 2005, the council purchased a property in Old Louisville that had stood abandoned for 15 years on the corner of Fourth and Oaks streets. The Weber Group was able to breathe life into the building, Duval said.

“We had worked with another company to just get some conceptual drawings, and we never could express to them what we needed,” Duval said. “But when Donny came along and listened to us and came up with a drawing, I mean, we hardly made any changes or suggestions on the drawing. They did a wonderful job.”

But the Weber Group’s contributions to the building weren’t just architectural. Duval said the Webers donated their architectural expertise and did the renovation at cost.

“I just about fell out of my chair,” Duval said. “We were able to complete this project, and it would have taken us so much longer. It just was done with love and dedication, and you can see it. I’m very thrilled. They’re some of my favorite people.”

The Council on Mental Retardation will be home to the Weber Gallery, an art space reserved for local and disabled artists. Donny Weber even donated a painting for a live-auction event.

The gallery is set to open in June.

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