When designing the new Chances Good Time gaming centre at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Quebec Street in Prince George, BC, owners John and Shelley Major wanted the building to be in keeping with the city’s natural features like its mountainous horizon – Prince George is located near the transition between the northern and southern portions of the Rocky Mountain Trench – and the colourful northern lights known as aurora borealis.

“Basically, I wanted a building that would appear as if it were a northern piece of landscape,” says Shelley Major. “So I wanted the front entrance to depict the sheen or reflection coming from he sky and reflecting the aurora borealis.”

Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, this light often appears as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, and most often occurs from September to October and from March to April. And, this past March, just in time to see the lights come out in the sky, the Majors opened their Chances Good Time gaming centre after 11 months of construction with a unique brushed metal feature that captures the wondrous effect of these night lights.

“The look was achieved with colourful lighting on top of metal work,” says Major.

The first step was the design and construction of the stainless steel overhang above the entrance.

That’s where Alex and Blake Goldie of Admiral Roofing stepped in.

“It was Blake and Alex who figured out how to do the metal cladding. It’s pretty cool. It looks sort of like feathers on a loon’s back,” says Major. “I was really pleased with their workmanship and their input into how to create the metal effect.”

Alex Goldie, co-owner of Admiral Roofing for ten years, says this type of specialty custom metal work is fairly new to company, which is well known in northern British Columbia for its flat roofing work. “The bulk of our work is commercial and industrial, anything from pulp mills to commercial buildings in Prince George,” says Alex.

While 90 percent of their focus is on flat roofing, he adds, the company is looking to diversify more.

Admiral was contracted to do such a flat roof on the casino with some metal trim, but after talking to the owners, Alex and Blake brought forward ideas on how to achieve that northern lights look they wanted ornamentally through the use of metal and lights.

“They wanted some kind of metal over the front entrance, and one thing led to another . . . . Blake ended up designing it and proposing the design to them,” says Alex. “They wanted something reflective, with different colours of lights shining on it, which is the reason we went with the stainless steel.”

It can be a challenge to work with stainless steel, however, notes Alex. “Blake’s biggest challenge was the time of the year – it was late winter and early spring. The work had to be one under a hoarding, and we had to keep that area heated. He also had to have gloves on all the time, because he couldn’t let his bare fingers touch the metal or leave fingerprints. It’s so hard to clean, the last thing you want is to be up there and polishing it.”

Blake says that in designing the piece, he had to consider the size proportions and make the best use possible of the stainless sheets, which can get expensive. He and sheet metal journeyman Nathan Coole designed and patterned the piece from 26 gauge stainless. It consists of over 400 16-inch by two-foot diamond shaped pieces, interlocked, and around 100 miscellaneous flashing pieces.

The pair came up with a pattern, traced it by hand and manually cut each piece. They used the company’s computerized brake – the first of its kind in northern BC – to interlock the pieces. Alex says the machine allows for exact folding, which is beneficial when numerous pieces of the same measurement are required.

“This equipment was installed in October of 2007 and this was the first large project utilizing it,” he says. “This equipment coupled with the two on-site roll formers purchased over the last two years has allowed us to diversify more into the architectural cladding.”

It took three guys four or five days in the shop to cut and bend the pieces. Besides the weather, installation was pretty straight forward once the first few pieces were in.

“We started at the bottom and slid one up on to the next,” says Blake. “It was hard to get them to fit nice and even at the beginning because we were working on a curve, but then it’s kind of slanted out too.”

“We’ve always wanted to try something like that,” he adds. “We do a lot of custom work with roofing and over cladding, but this is something we’d like to do more of.”

Once the metal was up, it was time to add the lights.

For this, the Majors brought in Westcana Electric and Norway Signs and Lighting. Westcana’s Peter Sherba Jr. says, “They wanted a borealis effect, so from there we had to investigate different models of lighting to give her the effect she’d like,” he says. “We built some example models and tried them out. We had to ensure they worked in all weather conditions. Also, with the brushed stainless steel look, the trouble is that some light doesn’t reflect on metal very well. “We also didn’t want the colour to take away from the brushed look. So we had to find the right lights to get it to really reflect.”

The end result according to Sherba Jr. is a “beautiful combination of metal and light. The combination looks just like the stars in the galaxy.”

“We’re extremely happy with the result,” says Major.

Or you could say it even reflects the shining colours and lights of the many slot machines and games that greet you once you enter under the metal façade into the gaming centre itself.

Either way, the metal design has certainly won the jackpot.