Tenants at the “mancaves” of the Stone Oak Business Condominiums at the corner of Airport Highway and Albon Road have new neighbors after last weekend’s grand opening of a new facility for the veteran youth volleyball organization, Glass City Athletics.
The 22,500-square-foot facility will house Glass City Athletics’ travel youth volleyball program, as well as Toledo Elite Basketball Club and Toledo Sport and Social Club adult recreational sports.
Developer Stephanie Kuhlman of Industrial Developers Ltd. estimates the facility will bring in 300-400 people a weekend during travel volleyball tournaments. This could mean more development along Airport Highway.
“At the moment, once you hit that Super Kroger by Holloway, everything sort of stops right there. We’re hoping to tie that development space into our development farther down,” Kuhlman said. “There have already been more sales of land as people know that things are coming. It just stretches everything west a little bit.”
Glass City Athletics owner Dana Hooper connected with property owners Greg Repass and Rich Iott through Kuhlman, whose daughters play volleyball at the club.
“I’ve been looking for the last eight years for a place, but nothing fit with location, price, all those kinds of things,” Hooper said. Until now, the volleyball club has rented spaces around the city, including Tam-OShanter and the University of Toledo.
Repass, co-owner of the 15-acre property, said he hadn’t planned on opening an indoor athletic facility. In fact, the original plan was to augment the existing Stone Oak Business Condominiums with more mancaves, individual, multipurpose condominium units geared toward men. However, after connecting with Glass City, the project took a different path.
“God had a different plan and we were trying to be obedient to him,” Repass said. “We wanted to do something that would benefit the youth in this community, and [Glass City] needed somebody who would believe in them.”
In addition to the sports facilities, additional retail and restaurant facilities will be going in on the property in early 2015. The biggest of these additional facilities is a nationally franchised indoor trampoline park called SkyZone. That project broke ground earlier this month and should be open early next year.
SkyZone approached the property’s owners and developers after spending a long time scouting locations in the Toledo area. They were eager to build near an athletic complex because of the extra business the captive audience of tournamentgoers can provide.
“When a family comes to town for a tournament, the players usually have siblings, the other kids have nowhere to go, nothing to do,” Repass said, “So one parent can go take the younger kids to jump on the trampolines next door. We truly think it was a match that was made in heaven.”
Kuhlman said the Las Vegas-based company has opened 50 new locations this year; the next closest location to Toledo is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The project is estimated to create 70 new jobs. As for the ‘mancaves,’ Repass said the tenants were a little nervous to have such a large-scale project go in right next to them. However, so far, so good.
“Quite honestly, it’s not the direction they thought that the project was going to go — but they’ve welcomed the tenants,” Repass said. “They understand that the new development is good for everybody, good for them and good for our community.”
