Mr. Freeze: How Julian Bayley Turns Ice Cubes Into Ice Castles

The walls of the Minus 5 Ice Lounge are blocks of ice, inlaid with signs that read "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" and "What Happens in Vegas...", both carved from ice. There's a Mandalay Bay sign (made of ice), the face of a woman winking seductively (made of ice), a 12-foot-long bar (made of ice), and walls adorned with abstract designs of multicolored ice. In one corner, an ice chapel beckons those impulsive and hot-blooded enough to get hitched.

It's 72 hours before the grand opening, and the bar is still unfinished—a cacophony of chain saws, belt sanders, and air compressors. In the middle of the room, nearly hidden under a black and purple snowsuit, Heidi Bayley is crouched over, chiseling small pieces off the "cushions" of a giant, round bench. Its 31 precut pieces are labeled like Ikea parts (round chair, back rest, piece A, piece B) and were designed to fit together right the first time, mostly. Bayley is just taking off some errant edges.

Over Bayley's shoulder, her father, Julian—cofounder of Ice Culture, the world's preeminent builder of frozen palaces—contributes an occasional bit of advice. "In theory, it works like Lego," the stout 71- year-old says. "Until the room changes."

That remark turns out to be prescient. A tall, lean, slacker-mogul type strides into the room, all tousled hair and sideburns. He's wearing expensive-looking jeans and an unzipped fleece embroidered with the words "The Coolest Experience". This is Craig Ling, president of the Minus 5 chain, and he's not happy.

Ling tiptoes melodramatically between the bench and Victorian-style couch to show how their arrangement will constrict mingling. Not only that, the bench is too big, taking up the space of 10 paying customers. "It's not going to work!" Ling says. He barks new orders: Turn the bench into a pub table and chair and move them from the center of the room to a bank of windows so people can see a bit of the casino floor below (and gamblers can see the party above). Frame out each window separately. Move the chapel. Replace the colored friezes with sculptures. Add crown molding.

Ling takes a breath, fog swirling around his lips. "And I want an 8-foot-tall statue of Elvis," he says.

For most contractors, such a last-minute remodel would be impossible. But this is Las Vegas, and the house never leaves anything to chance. Two weeks ago this space was a 1,200-square-foot walk-in freezer; today it's on the verge of being Sin City's most stunning new nightclub. Julian Bayley specializes in the construction of immodest frozen interiors. His company, based in Ontario, Canada, produces 280-pound blocks of ice and turns them into just about anything a client might want, from shot glasses to motorized rickshaws. Bayley has built arctic lounges and restaurants in Thailand, Miami, and (inevitably) Dubai, creating along the way the tools and techniques to make ever more ambitious ice castles. Total cost of Minus 5, Las Vegas? About $4 million, including the giant freezer that keeps the thing from melting, a discotheque's worth of LEDs (they don't heat up), and a banging sound system.

Bayley's company produces 280-pound blocks of ice and turns them into just about anything a client might want, from shot glasses to Elvis.
Photos: Asger Carlsen

It all started with punch bowls. In 1969, Bayley sold his family's advertising business in England and headed across the Atlantic, planning to restart the company in Canada. He made it to Hensall, the country's white-bean capitol (population 1,000), where he decided that advertising was pretty dull. He'd been catering on weekends, mostly for fun and beer money; now it was his full-time job.

On a pick-up run to a food-supply warehouse, Bayley spotted a mold for ice punch bowls. He found out who made them and bought one for himself. Back then, ice sculpting was dominated by chefs and wannabe artistes with hammers and chisels, whose work melted midway through the bar mitzvah. Bayley began charging $120 per bowl; he'd ship them as far as Toronto and Detroit. "It just snowballed," he says. "Excuse the pun."

Trouble was, his customers started asking for more intricate sculptures—twin lovebirds in a giant heart is a popular one. Bayley signed up for a four-day ice-sculpting course at the Culinary Institute of America, but the class only confirmed his nagging suspicion that freezing your ass off in an icebox was for suckers. "There was no benefit to making the same thing over and over," Bayley says. "You still had to get in the freezer and carve it." He knew he'd have to figure out how to turn ice art into a commodity.