Ghostboxes... here is your chance!

[drfrightner]

Read this article. The time to move is now.

Larry

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090705/...ing_ghostboxes

[Allen H]

I have three derelict grocery stores within five minuites of me and about 10 huge stores empty within a 10 min drive. If I ever lose my current location then Im definitely heading for one of those. Great parking there.
Allen H

[drfrightner]

I think the point is that because of the economy being down, because there is so much empty space the time to leap on one is now. Its kind of like if you are a first time home buyer the time is now to buy and stop renting. Deals can be made now, but maybe not a year from now, maybe not two years from now. You jump while the iron is HOT!

Right now that iron is melting! LOL

Larry

[beardedbil]

Its very frustrating looking around the country and seeing everyone else in this industry use this economy to their advantage by finding great empty buildings and amazing deals to go along with them. I have asked every empty warehouse, parking lot, building, store front etc... within about 60 miles from me and they still want astronomical prices even though they have been sitting vacant for years. Even with the economy and knowing they likely wont get a tenant in the space anytime soon, they would rather claim the loss on their taxes than only make a small percentage of what they can charge a large company to rent out the same space. It probably also has a lot to do with the cost of living in my area since we are only 30 mins from NYC.

I read a lot of these posts and it just shocks me to see these 18 - 20 year olds who come up with these amazing empty buildings to build their attractions in. The same type of buildings here would costs 3 to 4 times as much in rent. I recently looked at a warehouse and the owner wanted something like 15 million to purchase. While the warehouse is huge it is very telling that commercial real estate just hasn't dropped here like it has everywhere else. This area just doesn't allow for a start up professional haunted attraction... you really need to be established with a large budget to move in here and have any hope of finding a location at a price that you can afford to pay.

[drfrightner]

What do you consider too much? What are you offering and what is being offered back to you? Larry

[Spookyfinder]

I know there are SEVERAL large empty buildings here starting to open up. We scored our building (50K sq. ft.) for almost nothing... and it's a good building. But we're already making plans to move into, say, an old Home Depot or a similar building.

This IS THE TIME to start looking for locations. I can also attest to the high prices remaining on these empty spaces. Here, you can't get a 10K sq. ft. for LESS than $15K A MONTH!!! This would also be a building in the BAD part of town! This mostly has to do with the way Lexington is laid out and the surrounding farms... ugh... makes me sick!

When Circuit City went under, there was a BIG (45K sq. ft.) store that sat empty... they are STILL wanting $44K a month for it! NO WONDER CIRCUIT CITY FAILED!!!

-Tyler

[Greg Chrise]

Unfortunately, hospitals and government always have money and that is who they would rather have as tenants. Similarly this is who wants to expand when the economy is in a down turn. They like 18 year leases or more, not a few years or by the year.

Or they would sell it outright to match that inflated rental rate over so many years. The prior tenants already paid off the building so they are looking for the big pay off.

Just like undeveloped property shot up here over a 5 year period from about $2,000 per acre to $18,000 per acre because the State was buying to install a new loop and all the frontage for hundreds of feet out. All that will be redeveloped at premium tax paying levels.

[beardedbil]

Larry,
One warehouse we were looking at was 40,000 sq ft (Way too much for our first year) however only the bigger properties out here have some parking lots, and most do not have any, due to the high cost of land. The owner wanted $10 per sf. That's 400k a year... or even if we could only rent it for 3 months (which the owner was not interested in...) that would be close to 100k. Are you kidding me? As a start up we don't have $100,000 for just the lease portion of our budget. Perhaps I am thinking about this all wrong and maybe we do need that kind of money to have an attraction in our area... but most if not all warehouses want between $15 - $25 per sq ft. So at first I was excited to hear he was much lower... but now the size of the warehouse kills us because we aren't going to use all 40,000 sq feet.

I have tried offering them anything and everything to work with us... from a percentage of our profit (which is very hard to determine what that would be since this would be our first year going pro), to putting any type of advertisement the owners would want on all our promotional material (tickets, coupons, billboards, flyers, etc). We have also thought of offering them vendor space within our attraction, VIP tickets etc... these owners don't really care about anything but cash. After looking for close to 3 years, its gets frustrating when you have nothing to show for all the research, phone calling, emailing, and time and still no location.

The funny thing is, I see other attractions around the country that have 50,000 sq ft haunts and are only charging $15, but here we could probably charge double that without a problem. I guess everything is relative... Here a movie costs $12-15 depending on which theater you go to, and more if you want to see it in IMAX.

[Motograter]

beardedbil
I know what you mean. This will be our 3rd season and we still are having trouble trying to find a much bigger location. We liked this one building that was 12,000 sqft. The dude wanted $13,000 A MONTH WITH A MIN 3 YEAR CONTRACT! Some people are just crazy asking for that kind of money.

[beardedbil]

I couldn't agree more Motograter... Especially in this economy you think they would at least want to make SOME cash but they would rather take a total loss, helps them on taxes... it's a shame.

[HauntedMemphis]

Commercial real estate has not seen the price collapse that homes have seen. Predictions have been going around that it should have a sharp drop in the next 12-18 months, but so far, they have been holding.

This has been true pretty much nation wide.

[Darkblood]

I hear you on this thread loud and clear.
Our first year was going to be 4 years ago and we were going to use the basement of a 10,000 sq. ft. building in our downtown area (town of 6,000).
This was agreed for a percent of the door.
Well the next day when we went to sign the paperwork he changed his mind and said he wanted us to use the upstairs...for 9.00 sq. ft. We couldn't afford that!
We checked around and one empty building that was about 15,000 sq. ft. (basically a pole building) wanted 555,000 bucks to buy it (not interested in anything else)...no way! In this little town.
Luckily our building fell into our lap, but it has its problems and if we can, next year we want to move to a bigger better location.

Kirk

[freak 'n' stein]

It's exciting to hear about such properties going on the market, considering they suit the haunted attraction industry so well...but like most, the price tag hurts to hear. All those damn zeros tacked onto the end of the price...ouch!