Developing a business plan for indoor rifle/pistol range

[TheBull]

Hi all:

While waiting for my next consulting contract to start, I've been developing the idea of building and running an indoor 100+ meter rifle range with a 50+ meter pistol range. I would like to have both static and dynamic targets. I interested in gathering some of your input on whether this type of range would be beneficial to you. I know there are two pistol ranges locally here. One of which is indoors. I don't know of any indoor rifle ranges. I'm not looking at selling guns, so I will not compete with established local dealers.

Given the price of land in the area, along with design and construction of the actual range, I could be looking at $1.5+ million development cost. Therefore, I would like to gauge interest from the local shooting enthusiasts, before getting too deeply involved. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

I case your wondering who this new guy is. I am self-employed software consultant that has been living in Monroe County since 1997. I worked for two local companies (Cornet and sanofi pasteur).

[jcabin]

Actually a few local members and I have been discussing this lately.

I voted "not sure if I would use it".

Reason being is location and cost.

Pocono Pistol Club opened last year and they are just too highly priced for just about every person I know.

18 dollars an hour, yeesh. The membership reduces it to around 12 an hour or so.

You can buy a membership, which was originally so high that nobody even gave it a second thought. They did finally lower it after realizing monroe county isn't full of rich people, and now I know of a few members here who have a membership there.

Then on the extreme side, you have an out door range, sunset hill, with a 35 dollar life time membership and 10 dollars and you can shoot all day. It's not the easiest on the eyes, and it's not efficient at all. However it's better than spending an ass load of money just so you don't have to wear a jacket when you go shooting.

[incynr8]

What that county/area needs is a good 'Rod and Gun Club'.

[ReconLdr]

I voted yes....I would use it once a month. This is dependant upon cost. I would like to have a range like this at my disposal. Just don't price it out of reach for most normal people, with normal budgets.

[-JD-]

Feel free to ignore all this, but FWIW, one big consideration is financing. I don't know you or your financials - nor am I asking, but you'll need a huge chunk of change even IF you can get a loan for this.

Background and details:

I'm a vendor to the self storage industry (20+ years) and just got back from the latest industry conference. I sat in on round-table discussion with several mortgage brokers who work in the industry. In the past 10 years, it was not too unusual to get "permanent" (post-construction loan, 3-5 year term on a 20 year amortization schedule) financing with a 75%-80% loan to value (for a pro-forma calculation of stabilized occupancy) ratio in a non-recourse CMBS loan. Now, they are talking 60% loan to COST, full recourse, if you can get it. That is for an industry that has the lowest default rate of any large segment of the commercial real-estate sector and that has established demographic and performance metrics.

In other words, a project that costs $1.5M would cost the investors $600K up front, and they would be personally liable for the additional $900K. Debt service would be maybe $7K/ month alone (at an optimistic 20yr/7% loan, excluding taxes, insurance, and all operating costs).

If you could get the same financing, at $15/hr you are talking 460 rental hours per month, or 115 users shooting an hour a week, just for mortgage payments!

[Dredly]

depends on cost, 1.5 mil would end up with a huge overhead cost which would be insanely expensive to recover by just range time, what ammo would need to be used?

I'd like to say Hell yeah it would be great! but from a business stand point I don't think it would be an easy victory, you do have local competition in the indoor range area already (dunkleburgers), there are also numerous outdoor ranges around where people already shoot and the price of ammo is driving a lot of people off the ranges.

[jcabin]

depends on cost, 1.5 mil would end up with a huge overhead cost which would be insanely expensive to recover by just range time, what ammo would need to be used?

I'd like to say Hell yeah it would be great! but from a business stand point I don't think it would be an easy victory, you do have local competition in the indoor range area already (dunkleburgers), there are also numerous outdoor ranges around where people already shoot and the price of ammo is driving a lot of people off the ranges.

Indeed this is why PPC is so expensive, IIRC the project cost them $2 million.
Is what the facility offers really worth that much, I think anyone can easily see it is not.

I can't say for sure if PPC is making money or not, but at the current prices nobody I know would even think twice about using their facility. I guess they make most of their money off tourists and vacation home owners in the area.

[Kramer]

Sounds like a good idea especially during the winter.

Would NFA be allowed?

[rovert97]

the one thing that will kill you will be insurance.

[Dredly]

the one thing that will kill you will be insurance.

and the ventilation system