You want to go to Arab?

I would love to be the owner of a kick-butt local LAN Center. I think Huntsville needs one.

Ditto. FB and I have discussed this ad nauseum.

A LAN center would rule.

What\'s wrong with Arab? It\'s only 30 miles from here. That\'s how much I had to travel, on a bus, every day, to and from school in Germany. Long rides don\'t bother me anymore.

For those on the north end of the county its more like an hour each way.

How far did you get?

We agreed that there should be a huge market for that type of service in hsv and that if either of us becomes independently wealthy we will start one.

Off to work on the independently wealthy part...

I\'ve always thought that a sweet LAN center across from Grissom in one of those business buildings would have been really lucrative (as far as game centers go).

What\'s better than being the only LAN center in a city thirsty for one, and having thousands of high schoolers mingle and pass by your business pretty much year round.

I could be wrong.

Or you could be extremely right, Diesel.
If that NovaCon \"tournament\" was any indication, people want a place to go and game. I didn\'t know there were so many hardcore H2 gamers in Huntsville. Of course, they can\'t be that hardcore if they don\'t know about THX... ;)

My exact thoughts, D. Grisson area = a lot of kids with money to spend.

Lol. I love Arab. I\'m actually closer to Arab than I am to Huntsville. I\'ve been a member of two different churches in that town and spend a decent amount of time there for social and academic purposes. Are you wanting to go to a particular place of business there, Mintz? Or just Arab in general?

Amen. It\'s 30 minutes to my highschool in south Huntsville and 45 minutes to UAH from where I live. I spend about 8 hours of my week just driving. City people blow my mind. I can\'t imagine leaving to go somewhere and being there in 5 minutes or less. I\'m going to enjoy living in Huntsville sooo much next year. Everything will be so close.

A lot of gaming happens at The Deep. Are any of you familiar with them? I don\'t think they do much large scale LANing, though.

The only way I heard of Arab is because of that LAN center.
I was utterly stunned at how close everyone was here. I mean, we\'d pull out of our driveway, and five or six turns later, we were pulling into the mall! In Germany, we lived on an itty bitty post called Dexheim, which didn\'t have anything. You could walk from one side to the other in twenty minutes, no lie. WALK. So of course the closest (and bigger) post was 30km away, so we\'d have to go shop there whenever we needed something. Long rides were the norm.

Mintz,

I dunno how much of H\'Ville you\'ve gotten to see yet, but we are pretty spread out. For example, I don\'t know exactly where you are at on post, but reguardless of location, you are at least a 20 minute drive from my house (in good traffic), and The Rev is just as far or further in the other direction. To get from my place to Rap\'s house, I allow 20 minutes, and that is taking the back country roads. If I had to get there going through H\'ville, it would be more along the lines of 30 - 40 minutes.

I used to work in New Market, so I would drive about 30 - 45 mins, depending on traffic. I made it in 25 once though, without speeding.

Yes, I believe I have talked with a few of you to some degree about a LAN center. Before I made some big career decisions a couple years ago, owning a LAN center was on top of my list of things to do in my life. I haven\'t necessarily tossed the idea, but it is now simmering on the back burner of my priority stove.

I agree that a space across from Grissom would be very good. I am not convinced that it is the only good spot, especially if you wanted to incorporate a cyber cafe/coffee into the business model. During the school year, the slow daytime hours could be supplemented by an older crowd this way. You\'d have to look at whether or not being open only in the afternoon/evening would pay the bills adequately. If school kids playing after school is adequate, then the spot across from Grissom is a no-brainer. I happened to being be doing some installs in that shopping center recently and the kids coming out of there really are mucho numerous.

The desire is there and all of us agree that it could do well. Besides a business model and a more detailed evaluation, we just need someone willing (and able) to get the loan.

PS. what would you name it? I have a good idea:)

I haven\'t been paying attention to this thread until just now.

Believe it or not I have had very similar idea as that which Foulbreed just mentioned. Chase Commercial Real Estate recently took over that complex across from Grissom and is trying to boost the image of it, I know this because my dad works for them and he helped put \"The Coffee Tree\" and \"Casa Blanca\" in there. I live probably less than a mile from this place and I can get there in less than three minutes, maybe.

As to the idea, I have thought about having a building and having rooms with about 16 computers along the wall with cubicle type dividers. You could have 3 to 4 rooms like this and have them all connected to one server, so if you want you could have up to 64 players in one game, depending on the games capabilities. But I would guess that most of the time it would be kept to 16 player games. Anyway, we could do this, I know we were talking about how wee could run a \"NovaCon Tournament\" if we wanted to, so I definitely think we could pull this off if we wanted too. I hadn\'t really thought about using platform type stuff, but that could work too, maybe even better!

I have also thought about buying some cheap warehouse space and turning it into an indoor paintball center or air soft or both.

How does \"LANtaculer\" sound for a name? or \"LANtrocity\", I like that one! :lol:

I don\'t know how serious you guys are about this, but I think its a great idea. That area really is perfect and I think business like this would do great if it was presented properly and managed well. I would think the inside should look very professional and comfortable, which might be difficult for a LAN place. You would have to put a lot of money into it thats for sure! I cringe at the thought of expenses.

The Lair

Slayer:

Ask you dad how much rent is over in that area.

On it. :razz:

Here is a place similar to what we are talking about, I think. http://i-frag.com/

These are their computer specs:
AMD XP 1800+
1GB DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 Video Card
40GB Hard Drive
Optical Mouse
Headsets
17\" monitors

I called my dad, but he was busy. So I went to Chase Commercial\'s website and found this http://www.naidirect.com/property_center/search/xml/displaylisting.aspx?lid=13574421. That should answer most any questions you may have.

I will talk to my dad later and get more info.

The listing above is not for the entire center I don\'t think. But, I am pretty sure that they are taking care of all the buildings. I will find out.

It says 972 sq ft available at $15 per square foot per year. 14580 / 12 = 1215 per month.

That\'s not a bad deal (I don\'t think).

This is all a really good idea. I would be willing to volunteer time to help get this up and started.

As for a name: LANination ZONE! Or how about: LANinator Terminator! No, no, those suck. Here is the last card I lay upon the table: LANtabulous Recreation Area. INSTAFRAG ROCKAHOLIC CENTER!!!111

Seriously: THX LAN Center

THX central

Undead Gaming

Yes, my dad told me that they list the from Woodmen of the World, which is behind that other Gym in the right hand corner, all the way down to The Coffee Tree and the new building they just built there. He said he didn\'t know the rate, unless it is the same as what i already submitted, but he said he would find out.

Thanks Slayer.

I\'m actually going to be part of a napkin meeting in the next week or so discussing the possibily of a LAN center in SE HSV.

There is also the Village on Whitesburg, which is also listed by Chase Commercial. It is currently being worked on, but it should be really nice when they get done. But I do know that they are going to be picky as to what they put in it.

He is going to check, but he said it will probably be about $20psf ($17 + additional charges). He said that is really prime location and he is guessing that price based upon what the Target Center\'s price is. But he and I are going to drive by today and check it out.

I will ask my dad about some high visibility locations he might know about.

I might have a good line on getting a loan. Got that whole VA load thing cooking, trying to see how much I can get. I should have a more solid number than \"a lot\" in a few weeks. *crosses fingers/toes/eyes*

DJ

Just so you know you can get up to $65,000 in loan money through the Small Business Administration community express program. Go talk to the SBDC at the Chamber of Commerce to find out about it. It is usually only open to women, minorities and veterans, but Alabama was so far behind everybody else in small business loans that the SBA opened it up to everybody just in Alabama.

Holy megabump batman. I'll definitely keep that in mind, even though it's looking more and more like I'll be moving from the area here in the next couple months :(.

DJ

Where you going DJ?

I wish HSV had a sweet LAN Center. It's hard to believe that there's not one here.

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LIVE: EA | Steam: rapturerapture | Xfire: raptur3

Even ARAB has a LAN center, but Huntsville doesn't? There's something wrong there.

True that.

][-][ //-\\ ][_ {()} ][

Assuming everything goes right, I'll be headed to Tucson by July for eSportsTV. I'm not gonna forget the LAN center drought in Huntsville, trust me, it's still my first choice when I finally get the money to get one going :).

DJ