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JESSICA BURTNICK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park will open its doors at the corner of McGillivray Boulevard and McCreary Road Aug. 17. Owner Arnold Cohn (right), a Winnipeg chiropractor, and real estate broker Jack Hurtig check out the site recently.

A business park on the southwest edge of the city has landed a tenant that promises to bring some added bounce to the development.

A Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park is scheduled to open Aug. 17 in a newly built 27,500-square-foot building in the McCreary Business Park, which is located on the corner of McCreary Road and McGillivray Boulevard.

TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT Los Angeles Times / MCT archives Hayden Rhone, 18, does a flip off a trampoline in the Open Jump area of Sky Zone in Anaheim, Calif.

The Sky Zone franchise -- only the fourth in Canada -- is owned by Winnipeg chiropractor/entrepreneur Arnold Cohn, who thinks he's found the perfect location for his new venture.

"I think the demographics are best in that area (the southwest quadrant). There are lots of young families... I also live in the area, and I've noticed there aren't a lot of entertainment or fitness options for the whole family."

The trampoline park will feature a series of walled trampoline courts that can be rented for 30 minutes, an hour or two hours by individuals looking for some fun and exercise, or by groups for birthday parties, aerobics classes and court sports such as dodgeball, volleyball and basketball.

Sky Zone is one of a number of new sports-, fitness- entertainment-type businesses that have opened during the last eight months in southwest Winnipeg or the neighbouring Rural Municipality of Macdonald, where the McCreary Business Park is located.

The Great Big Adventure family entertainment centre opening this summer in the Sterling Lyon Business Park and Cineplex Odeon's new VIP Cinema, which opened last November near the corner of McGillivray and Kenaston Boulevard, are other examples.

Jack Hurtig, the A.S.H. Management Group real estate agent who found the space for Cohn, said all of the new residential development in the area during the last few decades has created a pent-up demand for sports, fitness, recreation and entertainment facilities to serve the families who live there.

"We have six or seven months of winter... and parents are looking for options," Hurtig said. "And we're probably just scratching the surface of what we can do in terms of providing alternatives for families. I think we'll see some more of these smaller activity centres opening up to cater to this (need)."

Robert Prystupa and Randy Koroscil of Century 21 Bachman & Associates are the leasing/selling agents for the McCreary Business Park. Prystupa confirmed another group has purchased a parcel of land in the business park with the intention of opening a recreation and fitness centre.

Further details will be announced within the next few months, he added.

Prystupa said there is a strong demand for commercial space in southwest Winnipeg and the RM of Macdonald. And he wouldn't be surprised to see more business parks opening in the area in the next few years.

He said the four-hectare McCreary Business Park is filling up. The developer, Towers Realty Group, has only about 836 square metres left to lease in the three buildings it has built in the last two years. The buildings have a total of 5,945 square metres of leasable space.

And there's only about 390 square metres left to lease in a fourth building owned by Durango Construction Inc., he added.

Pre-Con Builders also owns a building near the front of the centre, which it uses for its operations.

Hurtig said he and Cohn looked at a number of other business centres in the area, but couldn't find suitable space. The McCreary Business Park worked because Towers Realty was prepared to build a structure that met all of his requirements, which included high ceilings and large spaces between the structure's support columns.

Cohn, who owns the Polo Park Chiropractic Centre, said California-based Sky Zone is installing the trampoline courts for the new indoor park to ensure they meet the company's safety standards.

He said the trampoline courts have walls for safety reasons.

"You can't fall out. You can bounce off the walls."

Cohn said he purchased a Sky Zone franchise after his family visited one of its indoor parks in Minneapolis last year. "The kids had such a great time and I thought, 'We don't have anything like this in Winnipeg, and we could use something like this.' "

He owns the franchisee rights for all of Winnipeg and has right-of-refusal on the rights to the rest of Western Canada. His plan is to start with one indoor park here to see if there is sufficient demand to warrant opening a second one in another part of the city.

"And in the future, if things go well, I'd like to expand further west," he added.

He said rental rates will be $10 per person for a half-hour, $15 for an hour, and $25 for two hours. But an hour is usually enough for most people, he added.

Know of any development in the office, retail, or industrial real estate sectors? Let Murray McNeill know at the email address below, or at 204-697-7254.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca