City architect Adam Tibbatts might be based in a Victorian cemetery building, but he still has hot Birmingham blood coursing through his veins.
And, thanks to his late father Neil, Snobs nightclub, which opens on Broad Street on 13 March, will always have the Tibbatts’ family DNA too.
Dad Neil created the much-loved features that clubbers remember from Snobs’ original base in the old Beneficial building on Paradise Street. Then, when it moved to Smallbrook Queensway in 2014, Neil’s son Adam was behind its reinvention.
This year, Adam has been masterminding the creation of Snobs 3.0 from his Grade ll Cemetery Lodge office in Warstone Lane. The fruits of his vision will be unveiled on 13 March inside the former Velvet Music Rooms site.
“As well as being part of the city’s heritage, Snobs will be the catalyst that helps to revive all of Broad Street’s golden mile which will get busier and busier,” predicts Adam.
The new Snobs will include Dalek-style ‘dimple influences’ from the Doctor Who television series, metallic variations of the club’s former plaster cast faces wall, plus state-of-the-art audio-visual techniques.
Mural Trader artist Daniel Russell-Ahern’s spectacular glow-in-the-dark artworks on the staircases will take clubbers on a memory-stirring journey from Snobs’ past through to its new present and beyond.
Adam’s team at Tibbatts Abel recently oversaw the design of chef Tom Kerridge’s mew restaurant in Chelsea and will soon be reinventing the Nitenite pods on Westside’s Holliday Street.
Neil Tibbatts’ original business, based in St Paul’s Square, once employed 100 people, but son Adam initially took it on with just two colleagues.
After a spell at Fort Dunlop, Adam, now company boss of Tibbatts Design Ltd with a dozen staff, returned the business to the Jewellery Quarter some seven years ago.
But instead of going back to his father’s old haunt, Adam bought Cemetery Lodge, built in 1849 to cope with the deaths from Birmingham’s growing population.
Looking ahead to the new club, father of three Adam says: “I didn’t meet my wife at Snobs, but she also loved to go herself. It’s a place that’s so close to my heart.
“(The new venue) will be aimed primarily at the 18-25 market, but it will be a relaxed environment for everyone. I’m 44 now so might be doing a bit more ‘dad dancing’ than before if we both go there for a night out.
“I remember walking into the original Snobs when we were looking at moving it the first time. It was so popular that you were sticking to everything!”
LED and audio technological advances will boost the new Snobs
Adam remembers how changing technology made the 2014 move to Smallbrook Queensway more of an opportunity than a challenge.
“Technology has changed again, offering some great features at an affordable level so we can embrace the venue’s original ideas and take them forward.
“Instead of having plaster cast faces, there will be coloured, metallic heads with spot welds to allow light and ‘smoke’ through creases in the faces’ shapes. There will be graphics, graffiti, DJs and so on.
“Looking at the space of an old nightclub, I thought: ‘How can we take it on to the next level?’
“Everyone going to the new, three-room Snobs, will begin upstairs from where they will be taken through an immersive environment – it will all be about the customers’ journey to create a real sense of expectation, beginning on the top floor with more than 100 illuminated boxes.
“Snobs won’t be pretentious, just somewhere that people can ‘lose’ themselves. They will lose their inhibitions just by walking through the door.
“Having two staircases will create a flow so that everywhere you go will heighten the atmosphere. It will be a place that’s outside of everyday life, where you can just ‘let go’.”
Pictures for Westside BID © Graham Young
