FROM SPAGHETTI TO MINI-GOLF, SCENE IS NOW SURREAL
Urban Putt transforms Denver’s Old Spaghetti Factory into surreal mini-golf playground, bar and restaurant
I warned the folks at Urban Putt that my 2-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son would be testing its new minigolf courses with the same gusto they devote to eating and playing.
That’s fine, they told me, even after getting a look at the zeal in my kids’ eyes as they surveyed the room.
The Sept. 11 media preview for Urban Putt’s new Lower Downtown location — the company’s first outside of San Francisco — doubled as a test of both its staff and its pair of elaborately designed, 9-hole courses that occupy the first floor of the 130-year-old City Cable Railway Building.
Urban Putt poured $5 million into transforming the space, wisely retaining the No. 54 trolley car from the building’s longtime gig as home to Old Spaghetti Factory. That marinara-stained icon may have received a new coat of paint, but Urban Putt is using the rest of the 12,000 square feet for whimsical, surprising and still-developing mini-golf challenges, along with a handsome bar and lounge that serves cocktails and from-scratch comfort food.
“In the experience economy, mini-golf is our niche,” said founder Steve Fox, who happily embraces every mar
keting buzzword that applies to Urban Putt. “There are other mini-golf courses, but I don’t think anyone else is creating a 40-foot-long, indoor submarine with a working infrared periscope.”
Fox describes Urban Putt’s aesthetic as steampunk — the sci-fi genre that mashes vintage mechanics with anachronistic historical references — but it’s more accurately an interactive art playground. Since opening in San Francisco five years ago, Urban Putt has found success in the city’s Mission District with a 14-hole course that channels the spirit of the fast-growing, immersive art company Meow Wolf, featuring Jules Verne-inspired props and tiny wooden versions of local landmarks.
Urban Putt started up not long after Meow Wolf did, but it’s not exactly a copy-cat. They just happen to be selling the same product: Instagram-friendly entertainment that sees art and commerce as different arms of the same “experiential” beast. Meow Wolf’s original installation, the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, N.M., has expanded and evolved since first opening, and now the company is plotting its takeover of cities such as Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Urban Putt isn’t quite as big, weird or daring as Meow Wolf, but the tastefully bizarre, sculptural quality of its courses certainly puts it in the same league.
“I’m not caught up with the idea that I have got to be slavish about the conventions of minigolf,” said Fox, who spent 35 years as a journalist. “Yes, it uses the medium of a golf ball, but we want to be freed of the shackles of a lot of those ideas of what miniature golf is or can be. It’s a palette that we can apply creativity to. We try not to be precious, but the people who work on this are indeed artists and artisans.”
Fox, who calls himself “chief greenskeeper” at Urban Putt, and his wife, Denver native Leslie Crawford, formerly hosted do-ityourself mini-golf parties for friends that grew so elaborate, they began doubling as charity fundraisers. The former editor of PC World Magazine and CNET, Fox lost his taste for journalism while watching its business model falter amid the rise of digital media.
Mini-golf, once a free-time passion, became his professional rehabilitation.
“We’re in a really interesting cultural point in time,” he said. “(Businesses) need to give people real reasons to get out of the house, and I feel like I almost stumbled upon this idea before realizing it was the cultural touchstone of where we are right now.”
Not necessarily mini-golf, he means, but immersive experiences. From Meow Wolf’s Kaleidoscape ride at Elitch Gardens to the increasing number of participatory gallery and theater shows like the DCPA’s “Between Us,” audiences are responding to thoughtful art and leisure activities that yank them away from their smartphone and TV screens.
The fact that Urban Putt is casual about everything — from traditional mini-golf rules to bringing your beverage with you throughout the game (you can pretty much set it down anywhere) — seems to cater to those of us who feel terminally buttoned up, hemmed in or burned out.
The sense of discovery is a big part of it. Urban Putt’s pair of Denver courses twist, turn and even overlap at times, with arrows on the floor helping to keep players on track when they get confused and/or a little buzzed (as many first-time attendees will likely be). Thousands of blinking, cleverly placed LEDs, motion-sensing software, and delightfully superfluous buttons and sound effects fill the courses, which are split into Downtown and Red Rocks themes (very, very loose themes, it should be added).
The courses will drive rulemeisters insane. Depending on where (and how hard) you putt the ball, it may disappear into a cave and reappear from the top of one of several flume-like channels. It might transform into pixels that are controlled on a giant arcade screen, or pull a loop-deloop on a rollercoaster curl. At one point, mine was swatted away by a glowing, piston-driven octopus. In a hole that mimics downtown Denver, my son had to navigate the impressively detailed buildings before reaching the virtual home plate of a Coors Field lookalike. (Appropriately, the sound of fans cheering poured forth when he sank it.)
A couple of holes involved wooden labyrinths that needed to be mechanically rotated to move the balls. They reminded me of a Klingon pastime from “Star Trek” — confusing and punishingly hard at first, then fun.
And sure enough, my kids beat the hell out of those courses, whacking their DayGlo blue and green balls from one concept to the next, doing their best to loosen and chip the recently glued and painted fixtures. Along the way, they played through miniature, wooden versions of Lakeside Amusement Park (notably, its name doesn’t appear anywhere, you just have to know that), the Wells Fargo “cash register” building, Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Denver International Airport. The last one featured a mini-Blucifer statue that I would very much like to steal.
It’s a delicate balance for a business to strike — this pining for surreal artistic bliss while also wanting to sell loads of beer and cheeseburger sliders. And as clever as Urban Putt’s designs are, certain holes looked spare and straightforward. Maybe that’s to be expected for a business that prides itself on continually adapting to its market.
“We know that people get crazy, have a few drinks and spill things,” said entertainment manager Alex Lane, who moved here from San Francisco for the project. “That’s part of the reason we employ a full repair team to touch up the paint and fix the wood. It’s part of the interactivity.”
As with a lot of things in new Denver, it’s easy to imagine some people will visit Urban Putt out of pure curiosity and never go again. Others may become devotees, tickled by the thought of partying and/or holding business meetings in such an environment. I liked watching my kids attack it with abandon, from the oversized gumball-style machines that spit out their playballs to the final hole — a spare animatronic fortune-teller booth that generates lucky numbers and advice on the back of Urban Putt business cards.
“If I weren’t worried, I’d be an idiot, because that’s the job,” said Fox, who signed a 10-year lease on the LoDo space. “But I feel like we’ve picked the right city for the right kind of entertainment opportunity.”
Entertainment is key. Despite a few hiccups, my family’s playthrough was peppered with moments of pure, unexpected delight — as when our balls were carried up a corkscrew lift to a ceiling shaft, then dropped down a percussive, melodic path of musical instruments stitched together to create a bric-à-brac ramp. When I went to search for the bathroom, I found myself in a hallway covered floor-to-ceiling in forest-green turf.
From the massive wooden arch that frames the bar (it used to hang on the outside of the building, but fell in the 1970s) to the flower vases full of drowned, neon-colored golf balls, density and inventiveness greeted me wherever I looked.
And that 40-foot submarine? My 2-year-old daughter was too scared to enter it, given its dim, moody lighting and sound effects. But my son loved the practice of “putting” his golf ball from a periscope-driven launcher.
You know, just like the Navy does.