Business Opportunities Using Fabric or Tarpaulin Buildings

Short summer seasons limit many of the recreation businesses in the northern areas of the US and Canada. Go-carting, mini-golf, waterslides and splash parks, along with dozens of other outdoor summer events cease in early fall and do not recommence until late spring. The primary reason is weather.

The entertainment businesses that attempt to defy this simple barrier to being open for longer durations experience prohibitive costs. Virtually the only waterslides that remain open are those located inside hotels. Mini-golf facilities close shop when the ground freezes. A few go-cart operations have found homes in old warehouses, but the facilities are pricey, taxes high and maintenance and insurance costs on the old buildings unreasonable.

Yet, fabric buildings offer a cost-effective alternative. With the ability to build clear spans exceeding three hundred feet and ceiling heights more than one-third of that size, almost any summer sport can be housed indoors and offer nearly year-round availability. A few driving ranges, opened more than two decades ago in fabric buildings, have found a niche and a profit path that seasonal operators would do almost anything to achieve.

Because of the design and materials used in tension fabric structures, almost all of the space becomes useable, while wood, concrete or steel buildings must incorporate buffers, design for support beams and posts that interrupt the flow of the building and consider the limitation of ceiling height in selecting a business in the buildings.

Batting cages, driving ranges, mini-golf, soccer and football and even full-fledged baseball operations easily can be held in a fabric building, extending seasons and revenue flow while incurring only modest operating and capital costs for infrastructure.

Small communities struggle to find a way to offer sporting venues and recreation opportunities for their residents in winter. Most frequently, they are limited to conventional winter sports. Yet, a small fabric building can house waterslides, splash parks and track and field facilities.

Go cart racing is simply the starting point for similar activities. Dirt bike tracks, mountain biking and so on fit well in the tension fabric structure.  Archery, short-range gun and target shooting and similar sports are also possible.

With the range of recreation businesses that can be housed in fabric and poly-fabric buildings, new doors are opened for would-be entrepreneurs, in rural towns across Canada and the USA, either operated in partnership with the community, in a private partnership relying on local investors or as a privately owned business.