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NovoDynamics CEO David Rock's new office, located on the seventh floor of the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com

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• NovoDynamics CEO David Rock's new office, located on the seventh floor of the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_01_fullsize.jpg
• NovoDynamics' CEO David Rock poses for a photograph in his new office in the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_02_fullsize.jpg
• Rounded corners and glass along with modern lighting are featured in the conference rooms at NovoDynamics on the seventh floor of the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_03_fullsize.jpg
• Modern furniture, a large flat screen television and high-end coffee maker are a few of the features in the new lunchroom or ? (pi) room at NovoDynamics on the seventh floor of the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_04_fullsize.jpg
• The front entrance and lobby of NovoDynamics on the seventh floor of the City Center Building in downtown Ann Arbor. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_05_fullsize.jpg
• NovoDynamics senior scientist Carl Grant works at his desk with a view of downtown Ann Arbor and the Big House. Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com /calendar/photologue/photos/01 Novo/cache/092012_BIZ_Novo_MRM_06_fullsize.jpg

For the growing software and internet technology community in Ann Arbor, downtown is the place to be. NovoDynamics, a software company specializing in document and image analytics, looked at a few locations around town before agreeing to a deal to rent the top floor of the City Center Building at East Huron Street and Fifth Avenue.

“We’re in 11,000 square feet now, which is double what we had before,” president and CEO David Rock said.

“When we moved the intent was to give us space to grow. We are definitely hiring right now, and my goal here is that I want to take a couple more floors in this building eventually.”

NovoDynamics is growing in part because it offers a highly specialized service. The company takes scanned documents and images and processes them into usable data for major companies.

“We build algorithms that can read their data and help them determine things like when car parts will go obsolete,” Rock said.

“We also build technology that can read global language documents. The military uses a lot of that when they’re out in the field.”

That global language technology can read a scanned document written in a language with a different alphabet (including Arabic, Chinese, and Russian) and translate the page into actionable information. The company also has an image-reader and image-enhancer product that can improve readability of documents captured as images through scanners, fax machines, or as pictures.

“We have over 200 different data sources that come into our data center each night,” he said.

“During the night that data is aggregated, it’s organized, and it’s indexed, so by the next morning our clients have updated dashboards and updated reports with the data they need to be successful.”

Rock said the company was founded in 2001 as a merger from an earlier company that was founded in 1997 using technology developed at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan.

“Our scientific team was the advanced artificial intelligence team for the ERIM before they were bought out by General Dynamics,” he said.

When NovoDynamics moved into the new space in the City Center Building, it completely renovated and redesigned the space to make it “high tech organic.”

“There’s not a hard edge here. They’re all curved walls now,” Rock said. “And there’s a lot of glass, a lot of windows, a lot of natural light.”

Neal Warling of Jones Lang LaSalle worked with NovoDynamics to find their new office. He said the availibity of downtown office space is dwindling with the expansion of new companies focused around the technology sector.

“It’s a good thing going on if you’re a landlord,” he said. “If you’re a broker or a tenant looking for space it’s getting really difficult.”

The office space, owned by Dahlmann Properties, had been listed by Mike Giraud and Randy Maas for Swisher Commercial Real Estate.

Ben Freed covers business for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at 734-623-2528 or email him at benfreed@annarbor.com. Follow him on twitter @BFreedinA2