In from the cold | When the mercury drops, business heats up at Maine's indoor sport facilities

It's the dead of winter. But even with a foot of snow on the ground and a thermometer reading of just a few ticks above zero, it's still a beautiful day for golf. On a Friday afternoon in mid-January, more than a dozen golfers are swinging their clubs at Out of the Rough Indoor Golf Club in Biddeford. They've lugged their personalized TaylorMade and Titleist bags inside from the cold, and they're swatting balls with oversized titanium drivers and making careful approach shots with short irons.

But instead of aiming at a distant green, the golfers train their sights on 3-D renderings of fairways projected on nine-by-12-foot screens in each of the eight golf simulators at the 10,000-square-foot facility. The real golf ball travels just a few feet before smacking into the screen and dropping to the floor, when a virtual ball takes over, thanks to a sophisticated sensing technology that detects ball movements such as trajectory and spin. The golfer sees the virtual ball as a computer-generated image that arcs over, say, the lone cypress tree guarding the green on Pebble Beach's classic 18th hole.

Chris Robinson built Out of the Rough with his business partner, Mike Descoteaux, in the fall of 2003 after figuring that the southern Maine market was filled with golfers who would jump at the chance to brush up on their swing during the winter. And for many of the indoor sports facilities scattered around Maine, the message is the same: Winter means big business. Multi-sport facilities like the York Sports Center and the Portland Sports Center ˆ— both owned by York businessman Kevin Barrett ˆ— feature full schedules during the cold season, their playing fields reserved for activities ranging from organized youth soccer to pick-up flag football games. Likewise, indoor rock-climbing walls like Maine Rock Gym in Portland and the recently opened Rock Rats Climbing Center in Union report strong crowds and busy schedules during the winter months.

For some customers, these facilities offer a more attractive exercise option than jogging on icy sidewalks or pedaling a stationary bike in a health club. "We were looking for something to do inside during the winter," says Jeff Blake, who, with his wife, Kerry, opened Rock Rats on New Year's Eve. "It's something altogether different, and it's something that might get people out of their chairs."

Others are happy to have the opportunity to play soccer, swing a golf club or practice top-rope climbing out of season. And from niche businesses like indoor golf and climbing gyms to more traditional multi-sports facilities, the increasing demand for indoor sports has created a healthy seasonal industry in Maine.

But while business booms when the temperatures drop, owners and operators of indoor sports facilities know it will fade out significantly when the weather warms up. The crowds clamoring for tee times at Out of the Rough will quickly abandon simulated golf for the real thing when the ground thaws. Soccer players will sign up with outdoor leagues, and rock climbers will opt to tackle granite faces in New Hampshire or scramble up boulders in Camden come springtime. As a result, owners of Maine's indoor sports facilities have to cope with the difficulties of running inherently seasonal businesses, where the bulk of a year's revenues need to be made in just a few short months.

At Out of the Rough, Robinson admits that boosting revenues during the months when local golf courses are open is a nearly impossible task. "When we did our market research, we looked at the density of serious golfers, and we've got a lot of those," says Robinson. "But the key is that it's a weather dependent business."

Nearly 90% of Out of the Rough's annual revenues ˆ— Robinson won't disclose the dollar amount ˆ— are made between November and April. Come springtime, Out of the Rough's staff of seven will be trimmed to just three full-time workers, and the facility during the off-season shuts down for part of the week. But Robinson tailored his business plan ˆ— from revenue forecasts to staffing needs ˆ— to fit the seasonal flux in demand. "We're swimming uphill against the innate mentality, which is to play outside at all costs," says Robinson. "It's a winter business. I wouldn't even call it a summer business."

When Robinson and Descoteaux were planning Out of the Rough, they figured that the key to their business was return customers. And customers would only come back, they reasoned, if the simulators offered a realistic alternative to outdoor golf. Though the technology has come a long way since the first golf simulators in the early 1990s, Robinson wanted to dispel the prevailing notion that indoor golf is just a clever diversion for duffers during the bleak winter months ˆ— a good excuse to drink beer and eat chicken wings with your buddies while playing a juiced-up video game that only slightly resembles golf. (Some places, however, wholeheartedly embrace the connection between indoor golf and boozy reveling, mixing the activity with the usual barroom suspects like billiards and arcade games. See "Sports and the city," page 16.)

So Robinson, who describes himself as a "terrible golfer," spent months searching for the latest and greatest indoor golf technology. He spoke with engineers at companies like San Diego, Calif.-based Full Swing Golf Inc. and DeadSolid Golf in Pittston, Penn. to understand how their simulators worked. Finally, a few months before Out of the Rough was scheduled to open, Robinson was 35 pages deep in a Google search for indoor golf simulators when he ran across a web site for Maumee, Ohio-based About Golf. The company was readying the launch of its indoor golf simulators, the design of which was based on military technology used to test the performance of artillery pieces. "As soon as we found them, we hopped on a plane and met with their engineers," says Robinson.

Robinson and Descoteaux spent roughly $800,000 to build the 10,000-square-foot facility and outfitted it with eight About Golf simulators ˆ— at a cost of $45,000-$50,000 each. The well over $1 million invested in the facility amounted to a sizable bet by Robinson and Descoteaux that Out of the Rough would be much more than a mid-winter diversion for golfers in southern Maine.

So far, that gamble has paid off. Since opening the facility in the fall of 2003, Robinson says the popularity of Out of the Rough has grown exponentially, helping the business turn a profit in its first full year of operation. (Robinson wouldn't disclose how much.) Roughly 75% of Out of the Rough's golfers are return customers, and Robinson says he sees new faces coming in every day. "We were surprised by how far away we were drawing people from," says Robinson. "We expected to draw from Portland to Portsmouth, but it's gone well beyond that. Now, we're drawing people from Augusta to Dover [N.H.]."

What's more, Nancy Defrancesco, executive director of the Maine State Golf Association, says facilities like Out of the Rough have helped usher indoor golf closer to the mainstream. "I hear more people say, 'Thank God there are indoor golf clubs, because I'd go nuts during the winter,'" she says.

The return of kickball
In November of 2003, Kevin Barrett spent roughly $4 million to open the Portland Sports Center, a 45,000-square-foot facility located just a few miles from Interstate 95. The sports center is state of the art, featuring custom lighting systems, a translucent PVC roof that allows sunlight in and a specialized convection heating system that draws warm air towards the playing surface. The synthetic surface of the full-size soccer field, FieldTurf, is the same surface played on by dozens of professional and collegiate football teams, including the New York Giants and Boston College.

Barrett had been operating the York Sports Center for roughly a year before PSC opened, having built YSC to serve what he calls an "exploding" need for recreational facilities in York County. With five kids between the ages of eight and 23 ˆ— all of whom are involved in sports ˆ— Barrett saw an opportunity to build a versatile yet simple structure that could house a variety of different sports. But seeing how demand waned during the summer months at YSC, Barrett knew that he couldn't bank on a steady year-round revenue stream at the new Portland location; PSC needed to make the bulk of its money during the colder months, when demand was high. And any tricks to boost business during the off-season would mean good things for the bottom line. "The business plan was to count on the prime hours, the prime 26-week season between November and April," he says. "But the challenge is to fill those other 26 weeks of the year."

During the peak months, Barrett's facility ˆ— which offers soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, flag football and ultimate Frisbee ˆ— hosts as many as 900 people on a typical weekday and up to 1,300 per day on the weekends. On weeknights, a field hockey league might take the field after a youth soccer clinic. But Barrett says he's had to come up with creative solutions to boost revenues at PSC during months when athletes can move outside. Last July and August, he developed a youth enrichment program at PSC that included a combination of off-site trips and in-house activities. Barrett hopes to expand that program this summer. He also is planning some quirky offerings for adults during the shoulder season of May and June, including a kickball league and a Wiffle ball league, that he hopes will attract a wider audience. "If you look ten years ago, there weren't that many of these facilities," says Don Shapero, president of the Arlington, Va.-based United States Indoor Soccer Association, who adds that his organization counts more than 550 indoor soccer facilities in the U.S ˆ— a big increase from the roughly 150 complexes a decade ago.

Though he declines to disclose annual revenues at either PSC or YSC, Barrett says his company, York-based Sportsplex Management Group, which runs both facilities, has yet to reach profitability. Barrett sees the spring, summer and early fall as keys to profitability ˆ— and his company's success. "We're in line with where we'd like to be, and we've been pleasantly surprised by the response," he says. "But trying to fill in that off-season time makes the difference between break even and profitability. If you can build up the off-season times, that's where you turn it into a profitable business."

Climbing the walls
Warm weather also means slimmer crowds at the Maine Rock Gym, an indoor rock-climbing facility in Portland that features more than 5,000 sq. ft. of climbing surface. But owner Scott Howard has worked during the past decade to boost business during the summer ˆ— even if that means taking the business to the customers. Howard has built a handful of portable climbing walls ˆ— 25-foot high structures attached to a moveable trailer ˆ— that he's brought to outdoor events sponsored by the Eastern Mountain Sports store at the Maine Mall in South Portland and L.L. Bean in Freeport. He's also built permanent climbing walls for other customers, including summer camps and towns such as Old Orchard Beach. That's helped keep the business profitable, he says, though he declines to disclose dollar figures, but he adds that the business has reached a saturation point during the past few years. "I was having to travel a lot farther than I wanted to get to customers," he says.

So Howard recently sold a 50% equity stake in the Maine Rock Gym to his father-in-law, Keith Morris, a native of York, England, who is taking over much of the day-to-day management of the gym. (Howard says most of his time these days is taken up tending to Olivia's Garden, his hydroponic gardening business at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester.) Transitioning into his management position at the gym, Morris has been working to develop more programs that will appeal to families and children. Kids' night, a Friday-night program where parents can drop their children off at the gym for a few hours, has been a hit. Meanwhile, the gym now has two competitive climbing teams for teenagers that compete against other gyms across New England.

Rock Rats' Blake expects business to fall off during the summer months, but, like Howard and Morris, he plans to offer kid-friendly programs including climbing instruction paired with outdoor recreation trips. For now, however, Rock Rats isn't a full-time occupation for Blake, who works as a paramedic in Gardiner, and his wife, Kerry, an ER nurse. "I think we're going to do okay," he says. "I don't expect to get rich the first year, but I don't think we'll have any trouble keeping the doors open."

Despite being hamstrung by limited off-season business, indoor sports facilities are experiencing enough demand during the winter months to justify the often large investments necessary to get them up and running. In fact, both Robinson and Barrett are planning to expand their operations into different regions. Robinson expects to start investigating options for a new Out of the Rough location in southern New Hampshire, in hopes of attracting more golfers from the Boston area and beyond. Meanwhile, Barrett says Augusta might be a good market for a new sports center ˆ— far enough away to avoid cannibalizing the business in Portland and York, while at the same time offering a dense enough population in the surrounding area to support an indoor sports facility. "This is one of the few ideas that I can name that when I walk into a room, whoever I'm presenting this to, I always get a great reaction," says Barrett. "Everyone has some sort of connection with a facility like this, and that's what makes it work."