147,791 square feet in West Valley City, twenty minutes from Salt Lake International. The arcade, a gym, a kitchen, and a music room with the stage in the middle.
So this is one building with four businesses in it, and each one covers a night the others can't.
An arcade fills a Tuesday afternoon. A gym fills a Tuesday morning. A show fills a Friday. A kitchen (Tacos Lopez) and a bar sell to all three. Every operator in this category builds 26,000 to 65,000 square feet and does one or two of those things. This is 147,791 square feet and does four, in a building that was finished in 2025 and has been sitting empty for 745 days.
The thing that makes it legal is the arcade. Utah will not licence an all-ages room with a bar in it. It will licence a non-tavern beer retailer anchored on a video arcade, under R82-6-701, and that rule admits minors. So a parent can have a beer while their kid plays. There is nowhere else in Utah where that sentence is true, and it is not a marketing line — it is a licence classification, and it is the reason this building works.
What I am asking for, and what I am not. I am not asking you to believe an attendance forecast. Section 12 lets you set the attendance yourself and watch the answer change. What I am asking you to check is whether the cost stack is real, whether the licence argument holds, and whether the phasing decision in section 9 is the right one.
| Size | 147,791 ft² · 165 × 896 ft · 32 ft clear Sourced |
| Built | 2025. Reinforced concrete, ESFR sprinklered, 46 docks + 7 grade doors, 26.81 acres, 279–550 stalls. |
| Zoning | Zone M. All 19 parcels inside the 500-ft envelope are Zone M — zero residential, zero agricultural. Sourced |
| Asking | $16.20/ft² + ~$4 NNN = $248,782/month. Metro industrial average is $9.60. The ask is 69% over market. Sourced |
| Modelled at | the rent in section 02 Founder target — not a signed number and nobody has offered it. |
| On market | 745 days. Delivered empty 14 months ago. County shows $0 building value on both parcels as of May 2025 — the 2025 buildings are not yet on the tax roll. |
West Valley City's use table marks "Event Center, Indoor" as PC. Every prior read of this project assumed PC meant conditional. It does not. The city's own legend says a use is "permitted when not adjacent to a residential Use, Residential Zone, or Agricultural Zone, and conditional when adjacent." Nineteen parcels in the buffer, all Zone M. So it is permitted outright — no conditional use permit, no hearing, no 12-month expiry. The same fact defeats the city's 10 PM entertainment curfew, which is a 500-foot proximity buffer and not a citywide rule.
This must be converted to a written zoning verification letter before anything is signed. Right now it rests on a spatial query against the city's GIS, not on a letter with a signature. WVC Planning — Jody Knapp / Brock Anderson, 801-963-3282. It is free and it is the single highest-value document in the deal.
A 160 ft of climbing wall, 28 ft tall: a 28-ft rope wall with 8 auto-belays, a 42-ft bouldering wall, and a free-standing island climbable on all four faces — about 3,150 ft² of terrain. Full basketball on a moveable maple floor, 3 pickleball courts, turf and a goal, Pump Heaven — Pump Heaven — weights and cardio. A 165-ft prize wall runs down one side, and the counter that redeems prizes also sells coffee, protein and pre-workout, so one person runs both.
Honest about scale: 32 ft of clear height caps the rope wall at 28 ft. Momentum Millcreek runs 40,000 ft² of terrain and a 50-ft lead arch. This is not that. It is auto-belay only — no lead climbing, no belay certification, no partner needed — which is the version that can sit next to an all-ages arcade with one attendant on the floor.
The stage is in the middle. A 16-ft walkable standing pit rings it, holding about 523. Three tiers step up at 4, 8 and 12 feet, cut into twelve keys — each with its own couches, its own arcade machine, and its own TV you can program.
Every seat is a couch in a numbered bay. Your ticket reads K2-B-04 — key two, bay B, seat four.
| Bay | Seats | Bays | Night | What it is |
|---|
Sightlines were tested twice — once in 2D section maths, once by casting rays through the built 3D geometry. Straight ahead, every seat is clear. Across the bowl, tier 1's TVs screen part of the far stage edge from tiers 2 and 3 — the fix is motorised pivot mounts, a few hundred dollars a bay, and it has to be specified before 72 mounts are ordered.
Twelve pool tables. A 21+ room behind an 8-ft demising wall with a 48-ft LED wall — the wall height, the separate entryway and the sightline block are exactly what Utah §32B-5-207(6)(b) requires to run two licences in one building. Esports sits in the corner between the stage and the bar: 40 PCs in four facing islands, 5v5 competition desks, 12 Smash setups, 6 twin fighting cabs, 8 linked racers, a 76-ft screen and couches pointed at it.
94 registry coin pushers — a curated collection including imported Japanese medal cabinets — plus 4 claws, 12 pinball, 12 skeeball, 12 air hockey, 10 ping pong, 6 shuffleboard, 8 cornhole, 4 horseshoes. Paddle games together, thrown games together. machines in the building all told, counting the 216 built into the bowl walls.
It is not a free-play arcade. Everything runs on a card reader — no coins, no tokens, no change machines. That makes revenue trackable per machine per hour, which is what makes percentage rent negotiable and what the licence regulator will want to see.
A single controlled entry, with the card reader and the sanitising run in the same sequence. Two things follow from that, and both are financial. Every visit is counted at the door, so attendance is a measured number rather than an estimate — which is what makes percentage rent negotiable and what a licence regulator asks to see. And a shared touch surface across 518 machines is a closure risk; a single norovirus incident shuts a family venue for a week and the insurance does not cover the lost trade.
$307,800 in the loadout: twenty stations at $4,200 including the slab trenching and drain runs, $145,000 of millwork, eight device stations, and the first year of consumables. The section slider takes it to ten stations if you want the capital back.
Three jurisdictions, three unrelated codes. In every one, the arcade-led all-ages framing is permitted and the concert-hall framing is restricted.
| Restricted framing | Permitted framing | |
|---|---|---|
| WVC 7-6-301 | "Event Center, Indoor" (includes Concert Hall) — named in the curfew | "Recreation, Indoor" (includes arcades) → P, and not named in the curfew |
| Utah alcohol, statewide | Bar / tavern → no minors, ever (§32B-6-406, §32B-6-706(5)) | Non-tavern on-premise beer retailer anchored on a "video arcade" (R82-6-701) → beer + all ages |
This is an arcade that hosts live music. It is not a music venue with an arcade in it. Same building, same machines, same bands, same revenue — and the second description is prohibited in places where the first is permitted by right. The arcade is not the revenue engine that funds the music. It is the licensing instrument that makes the building legal.
§32B-6-703(2) requires "70% of the person's total gross revenues from business directly related to the recreational amenity." The DABS handbook glosses that as 70% "excluding beer and food sales." Those two readings give opposite answers. If it is 70% of all revenue, ticketed concerts break the licence. If beer and food come out of the denominator first, arcade revenue only has to beat ticket revenue — which it does comfortably in every scenario in section 12.
This is a written-determination question, not a modelling question, and it precedes the lease. DABS, 801-977-6939.
| Section | Amount | % of build |
|---|
What "the shell" actually buys. The building exists but it is an empty concrete box built for pallets, not people. That line is HVAC sized for two thousand occupants instead of a warehouse, electrical distribution and panels, restrooms, under-slab plumbing and drainage, fire alarm and mass notification, sprinkler modifications around anything that obstructs the existing heads, interior walls and corridors, floors and paint. None of it is visible when you walk in, and none of it is optional. It is also where the largest honest savings are, because most of it is a specification choice rather than a code requirement.
A guess in a budget looks exactly like a fact, which is worse than a hole. Each of these is one phone call or one quote away from being real.
Every stream in the building, with a dial on each one. Most of them do not depend on a show happening, which is the point of the format.
| Stream | Base year | % of rev | Anchor |
|---|
50% of every door goes to the artist, plus a $4 per-ticket facility fee that is disclosed separately and never touches their share. At base that is paid out to musicians in a year. That is not charity — it is how you get the bands that make a Friday worth driving to West Valley for.
| Fixed, annual | Base | Basis |
|---|
Variable costs run about 30% of revenue: food and beverage COGS 26.4% and entertainment COGS 8.5% (both Dave & Buster's FY2025, audited), merchandise 45%, card processing 2.7%, marketing 3.5%. Contribution margin ≈ 70%.
| Segment | When they come | What they buy | What brings them back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Families with kids under 14 | Weekends, and weekdays after school | Tokens, food, birthday packages, mini golf | All ages until 8pm, and a prize wall a child can actually reach a prize on |
| Gym members | 6am to 10am, and again at 5pm | A monthly membership | The direct debit. This is the only line that bills whether they show up or not. |
| Climbers | Evenings and weekends | Day passes, courses, gear | Auto-belays mean no partner needed, which is the reason most people stop climbing |
| Teenagers and students | After school, and every show | Tokens, tickets, food | Somewhere to be that is not a car park, and does not require money to enter |
| 21+ after eight | Thursday to Saturday, 8pm to 2am | Bar, pool, esports, bay hire | A room that is genuinely different after dark from what it was at noon |
| Bands and promoters | Show nights | The room | 50% of the door and a stage in the middle they cannot get anywhere else |
The segments are chosen so that no two of them want the building at the same hour. That is the whole design, and it is why one lease carries four businesses.
| To | The promise | Why it is credible |
|---|---|---|
| A family | One building where a nine-year-old and their dad both want to be, at the same time, for a whole afternoon | Arcade, mini golf, courts, climbing and a kitchen under one roof. Nobody is waiting in the car. |
| A gym member | A gym you do not leave straight after | The counter, the courts and the arcade are on the way out. Dwell time is the product. |
| A band | A stage in the middle, and half the door | Centre stage means every seat is a good seat. 50% is above the usual regional split. |
| A teenager | Somewhere to exist without spending money to get in | Free entry, all ages until 8. Revenue comes from what they choose to do, not from the door. |
| An adult after 8pm | A bar that is not a bar | Pool, esports, a 76-foot screen and a private bay you can book. |
| Channel | Role | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| The app | Owned. Membership, tokens, booking, tickets, ordering to the bay. $10 off on first install. | Built. No app-store cut — it installs from a link. |
| The card | Every visit is identified at the door, so attendance is measured, not estimated | In the systems line |
| Bands and their audiences | Every act brings a mailing list. 200+ show nights a year is 200 audiences introduced to the building. | Zero. It is the door split. |
| Schools, clubs and leagues | Weeknight inventory, sold in blocks rather than singles | Sales time |
| Corporate and birthdays | Fills daytime and shoulder hours at a premium | Sales time |
| The building itself | 147,791 ft² on a main road, twenty minutes from the airport | Signage, in the FF&E line |
One membership, one card, one balance. Tokens run the machines, prize tickets buy prizes, and the two never convert into each other — that separation is what keeps the machines inside Utah's amusement-device rules, and it is enforced in the software rather than in a policy.
Memberships are the only recurring line in the building. Everything else has to be re-sold every single day. A membership base is what carries a wet January and a slow Tuesday, and it is the number to watch before any other.
Auto-reload and card-on-file mean a game never stops mid-round for a payment. Bookings hold a specific court, table, tee or bay, so a visit is planned rather than hoped for.
| Key activities | Key resources |
|---|---|
| Booking and running 200+ show nights a year | The building — 147,791 ft², 32 ft clear, already sprinklered, 46 docks |
| Keeping several hundred machines earning — jams, payouts, preventive maintenance | The machine registry: 94 pushers including discontinued and honorable units. It cannot be bought again at any price. |
| Food and beverage service across a kitchen, two bars and a counter | The liquor licence, and the all-ages classification that makes it possible |
| Supervising the climbing wall whenever it is open | The card system — every swipe measured per machine per hour |
| Selling weeknight inventory as leagues, courses and blocks | The stage in the middle. No other room in the region has it. |
| Running the membership base | The team, and a general manager who can hold all of it |
| Partner | What they provide | If they walk |
|---|---|---|
| The landlord | The building, the TI allowance, the step-rent ladder | There is no project. This is the single point of failure and it is why the lease terms come before everything. |
| Machine distributor | Hardware, financing, and revenue-share placement | Others exist, but the compliant redemption pusher is a small market and price-on-application everywhere. |
| Promoters and agents | The acts that fill 200 nights | Self-promote at a lower fill rate, or the room goes dark on the nights that matter most. |
| Card system vendor | Readers on every machine, the wallet, the reporting | Switchable, but note that pushers may need a separate reader SKU — ask in writing before signing. |
| Insurer | Cover across five risk classes at once | The climbing wall does not open. It is a named exclusion on most general liability policies and needs its own endorsement. |
| The city and DABS | Zoning verification and the licence | The all-ages-plus-alcohol combination is the thing that makes the format work. Both determinations should be in writing before the lease. |
An arcade cannot fill a Tuesday morning. A gym cannot fill a Friday night. A music room sits dark six days a week. Each of those is a bad business on its own, and every operator in the category builds one of them and then buys the empty hours with marketing.
This building runs four at once on a single lease, a single card system, a single kitchen (Tacos Lopez) and a single team. The gym opens at six. The arcade and the courts carry the afternoon. The bar, esports and the leagues take the evening. Friday and Saturday the room turns into a venue. The same square footage earns across every hour it is open, which is the only thing that makes 147,791 square feet work at all.
Built as a destination, not a trade area. Salt Lake draws from an entire mountain region and the airport is twenty minutes from the door. A room where the stage sits in the middle and the audience wraps it in twelve keys does not exist anywhere — that is what puts the building on a map instead of in a catchment.
The Circle of Fibonacci is with contingency — about a quarter of the whole project — because tiered steel is expensive. It can be deferred. Open the arcade, the gym and the sports floor on a flat slab, trade for a year, and build the bowl out of cash flow.
| Lever | Saves | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Phase the bowl | $10,951,136 | A year with no shows. See the warning below. |
| Landlord TI allowance, $40/ft² over 15 years | $5,900,000 | Nothing but a conversation. A developer 745 days into an empty spec building has a reason to say yes. |
| Finance the machines rather than buy | $1,085,200 | Interest, and read the personal guarantee before signing it. |
| Day-one capital, all three applied | Down from |
The thing nobody says about phasing: it lowers the raise, but it does not lower the rent. You pay for all 147,791 ft² from day one whether the bowl exists or not. Run the model in section 12 with the bowl switched off and you will see phase one lose money — because a flat arcade and a gym cannot on their own carry the rent on a building this size at anything like base attendance.
So phasing only works if it comes with a step-rent ladder. Year one at roughly $6.00/ft² rising to the ask by year eight. That is one negotiation, and it is the negotiation that decides whether this project is a $26.5M raise or a $44.5M one.
The point of four businesses on one lease is that none of them has to carry the building alone. So the useful question is not what could go wrong — it is how little has to go right.
| If this happens | What still works |
|---|---|
| The bowl phases to year two | The arcade, the gym, the courts, mini golf, esports and the kitchen all open on a flat floor. The stage goes in from cash flow rather than from the raise, which lowers the capital ask by more than any other single decision. |
| Shows fill at half the modelled rate | Show revenue is a minority of the total. Memberships, the arcade, the courts and the kitchen do not depend on a show happening at all — move the dial in section 06 and watch how little the total moves. |
| Membership growth is slower | Day passes, courses and court hire carry the gym while the base builds. Memberships are upside, not the floor. |
| Machines cost more than modelled | Lease and revenue-share placement bring the capital to near zero on that section. The registry is the draw either way. |
| Rent lands above target | Move the rent slider. The model stays positive well past the asking rate, because the fixed base is shared across four revenue centres instead of one. |
The minimum case still works, and the sliders are there so you can find it yourself. Take every dial to the bottom of its range and the building still earns, because the thing being sold is a fixed-cost base spread across every hour of the week — not one bet on one format on one night.
These sliders drive the same model that produced every figure above. If you think I am wrong about attendance or spend per head, change them and see what happens. The LEAN case loses money — I have left it in on purpose.
| Line | Annual |
|---|
Cash breakeven assumes the contribution margin holds. Return on capital is EBITDA over day-one capital, pre-tax, before debt service and before any seismic or NNN number exists.
Every figure in this document is tagged. Founder means Cameron decided it. Sourced means an external source, named below. Derived means arithmetic on those. Est means a guess, and it is labelled as one so you can argue with it.
Insurance pricing at this scale — every published figure is small-business survey data averaging under $5,000/year and is off by an order of magnitude. Members per climbing gym and revenue per member — behind the Climbing Business Journal paywall. PC café utilisation — not published by anyone. Steam PC Café and Microsoft gaming-centre licensing — behind partner logins with no public SKU. Revenue for Andretti, Chicken N Pickle, Two Bit Circus, Free Play, Emporium and Ground Kontrol — all private; every figure available is an unverifiable data-broker estimate and none of them belong in an investor document.
The building is real and leasable today: 896 by 165 feet, 32 feet clear, columns on a 56-foot grid. The model below is that shell with the design in it, at true scale. Press Walk inside and you are standing on the floor at eye height.
Shell dimensions are sourced from the Legend Commercial listing. Everything inside is concept design and not for construction — an architect draws the permit set.
camcode2000@gmail.com
This page is a working document, not an offer. It contains no offer to sell and no solicitation to buy any security. Every forward-looking figure is a model output, and section 12 exists so you can break it yourself.
