Premises
As a general rule, the best premises in which to site a fixed (or static) adventure play structure, tend to be those with enough height to accommodate large slides - as these appeal across the age groups and adults alike - and hence will bring in sufficient revenue to guarantee your commercial success. Of necessity, the only available sites with ceiling heights of more than 4m, tend to be industrial (or more rarely ex-agricultural) buildings, which bring their own problems - namely that of needing change-of-use planning permission. The main stumbling block here will be insufficient parking facilities and passing commercial traffic.
Planning
Once you have identified a suitable site for your play project, it's always worth a call to your Local Authority Planning Officer to see how they feel about this kind of business concept in their area - (be warned, some have no idea what you're talking about if they don't have young children themselves! It can be useful showing or sending them similar pictures of a successful play scheme, Tiger Play can help with this). Change of use can take a long time to get through and costs money; all of which will turn to dust if in the meantime your unit has been re-let to someone else who just wants it for storage!
Parking
As already mentioned, parking will be an issue. Children and commercial traffic don't mix, so you will be asked to provide sufficient evidence of suitable parking spaces dedicated to your site which may number thirty plus. As you may imagine, very few industrial units of 2-5,000 square feet have more than five spaces! You may not be allowed to use roadside parking as an alternative - so you need ultimately to be prepared to address this issue most creatively. In our experience, this is the single biggest cause of planning failure for these businesses.
Finance
We have already shown several examples of adventure play schemes and prices, but here at Tiger Play, we are more than happy to discuss this aspect more closely once you have achieved planning. We will then design a bespoke indoor play scheme according to your site and budget. If you need to explore further finance options, other than the more usual ones, we can provide information.
Advice
If there is any aspect that you need to discuss more thoroughly at this stage, then Tiger Play will be glad to help. Please call or email us as you feel necessary.
Telephone: 01249 824 824
Email: sales@tigerplay.co.uk