East side field in the GTA?
 

Just a quick shout out to all our dedicated followers in the East end of Toronto. We love your support at the Mach1 airsoft Indoor Arena so far. But we don't know if all of you haven't made it down yet because of distance?
Are there enough of you out there for Mach1 airsoft to open up an "East side" Indoor field? You know we're quick to act when we make a decision on something, and we may just announce a new East side arena at any moment. Maybe even before the holidays. We're crazy like that. Let us know your thoughts.
In the mean time make your way down to Toronto's premier indoor Airsoft facility at 205 Milvan Drive, just 400 meters away from our airsoft retail store. Thanks for your continued support as always.

Make 1 big ass mega indoor field, and everyone will come.

60000 SQFT+.

+1

+1 East side!!! Easier drive lol.

Easy side for sure will have a big group of fans. And a good size is important.

Yah like....why split your costs between two tiny places?

Open a huge ass feild like cqb city in the states...that will be a first ever...probably in Canada.

If people want to play they will travel...especially to a huge venue that will allow people to play multiple roles...especially the sniper newbies and machine gun tent pitchers.

Y'all need a better marketing team. Hire a consultant, like me. :P

Regardless of where you guys are situated now, it's common sense that there's only two local CQB fields.

UA
Mach1

SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

People will FLOCK to you regardless, before your field opened, people would go to UA from all over, now that Mach1 is there, people will go to you regardless if you expand or not. If you have "Specials" on weekdays too, people will be more encourage to go.

If you do get a big place somewhere remotely close to the city, people will go to you even MORE!

CQB City in the us is 60,000+ SQFT, from current mach1 field, it seems ideal for max players of 10/15 vs 10/15.

Having two separate fields will limit the player base which may be a good or bad thing for players, and not ideally profitable for you guys. If you guys jam pack a location, that's where your profit margin goes up, however your player happiness goes down because it's a crowded cluster storm.

Ideally having one large field be cool, but also unrealistic, as I know rent in GTA for something on that scale would be quite pricey.

$8 to $12 as square foot.. for heated warehouse space - 60000 feet = $10 x 60000 = $600000.00 a year rent... 50k a month .. before you heat it.. 3k a month to heat, lets call it 55k a month operating costs ( before anyone makes any money ) $30 a session 1833 sessions a month - 25 operating days 73 a day

you need 100 people a day to run that show.. not impossible actually

large draw.. you have the greatest concentration of airsoft players in the country here in the GTA

need a million in starting capital to get going ..

Plus need to keep that traffic up, long term. Any place can be a flash in the pan. Loom at LaserQuest, for one example. Longevity. Keep this traffic, for years. And years.
And years.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME

well as long as the laws remain favorable to airsoft, I think we have a growth market for the next 5 years .. then a stable market thereafter.

having larger indoor facilities has had a positive impact on the growth in participation, I think it will continue.

You got first hands in the field, so I'll "nod" my head in agreement with you!

I'm glad to read that, and I hope your prediction proves right. I'm just making a relevant observation. I don't think there are many businesses that plan to fail within five years, LQ included. Yet it happens.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME

as long as you stay away from keele / finch. S'all good. hate traffic in that area.

More local fields is always a good thing I say. I play pretty regular but only on weekends. If there was somthing only 20min away I would definatly go for a quick weekday skrim.

I know ppl will hate it cause online every one is super leet, but if you look at allot of the fields in the U.S especialy in the southern states having small to mid size fields seem pretty viable if you expand the your market.

Granted when you see a youtube video of 40+ players many are young or new but the bottom line is as a business you need to fill the place up with ppl to keep the doors open not please all the super leet airsofters.

With proper education and good reffing new young players become good players.

I still think that investing in an airsoft field that can only barely handle 15 on 15 engagements is a huge oversight when it comes to airsoft.

Look at UA...on weekends you have like 40-50 people crammed in, and its horrible. You have new people coming in and other people giving up and leaving due to the over crowding. I never understood why on the busiest most jam packed day...they charge double admission prices. 45 dollars to be stuffed in like sardines, what a steal.

A field needs to open (maybe not 60k sq feet) that has a decent size...and not such a HUGE focus on all cqb. What a lot of people crave are SECOND STORIES, longer engagement areas, and hell maybe some over head path ways and stairwells to have some bottlenecks in areas that you have to fight around. Hell even third stories. And not all on one side of your double gym floor. I swear.... why don't the owners ask some bloody counter strike map makers to model their fields and TEST THEM in game rather then build shit and find out later how stuff wont work.

Shit buy some land, build de_dust/2 and be good to go. :p

That is nearly impossible without an active group of people coming daily.
But it would be nice. :D

+1 for specials on weekdays, I know many people who are interested in trying out airsoft, but can't afford to pay $50+ just to play once, especially when paintball is much, much cheaper (granted they do have a higher volume of people going to them versus airsoft fields).

More kill houses. The two main kill houses at the current Mach1 location are perfect. Small, but complex. Great for fighting through and great for room clearing practice. Big + in my books.

MOAR KILL HOUSES!!! Current location and possible future location.

Something in Scarborough would be ideal, maybe model it after Gamepod Combat Airsoft

^Yes. Having a large number of kill houses with some SMALL open areas in between is true CQB. The largest, and pretty much only gripe about the current arena is that there are only two complex kill houses and too many open areas. Cover is growing and getting good, but modelling after something like Gamepod or CQB City (on a smaller scale) would be perfect.

Gamepod and CQB city are supposedly frequently used by LE for training, which I assume helps float some of the considerable costs of keeping such a facility running.

If I were thinking of doing the same, I'd be researching whether there is a similar need here.

If a huge CQB field were opening, I'd be hoping it was where the mach1 field is now - near the 400 and 407 so is at least somewhat accessible from people west of GTA. Going through the city to Scarberia is not an attractive option :)

You know we are all about improvements and customer service at the current Mach1 Airsoft Arena. More kill houses, multi elevations, yup and yes. We hear you. Consider it done. But to Brians point, this is expensive to run and the numbers need to be high for this to be a long term viable operation. Pricing is based on competitive pressures of course, but much more importantly we need to charge enough to cover massive overhead costs. If the community provides the numbers and more importantly push to expand the sport to friends and work colleagues, then this grows and more venues will pop up.
We've already had some great support and interest from the corporate community. All of which were triggered by one dedicated airsoft enthusiast who convinced their work place to have a company outing. We gained a few new airsofters as a result, and it grows from there. If you make the effort, we will respond in turn.
Your support is awesome so far and gives us encouragement. Much more to come from MACH1 !!

From playing there once it already is going really well in my opinion for a brand new facility. Of course something on the east side would be nice but as mentioned I hope it wouldn't affect the current field. Personally a larger field will always be better but economics wise it would be a daunting challenge.

At the current field I agree maybe a third kill house and extending the second story into parts of the field would be awesome.

To also make the current second story a bit more playable a ladder or 2 into the below back alley would be awesome.

And shinobii you are spot on about introducing new people to the hobby, I plan on doing that sometime this winter season at your facility.

MOAR KILL HOUSES! More than just a third I mean. Four or five would be viable while still having plenty of open space to work with.

He'll yeah on the ladders to second level.

Elaborating on this: on one of more of the kill houses you could get some techmilogically inclined engineer type dood to build a second level. Could have small external staircases as well as an internal ladder. This would mean high to high fighting as well as high to low and vice versa. Makes things much more dynamic.

If doing this on one or two of the complex kill houses you could do one of two things for the lower structures with open rooftops like they have currently:

-have a rule stating no shooting down through open ceilings from upper levels, or

-Get a bunch of cheap translucent plastic panelling (the corrugated stuff is what I'm thinking of) to create ceilings for the kill houses while still allowing in ambient light. Means no enforcing previously said rule an no disputes because people don't know the rule or simply aren't listening and are shooting through pretend ceilings anyway.

One more point of interest would be to set the kill houses in positions so you could create a couple long hallways or corridors that run between a couple of them to add another danger element to the game. Can't run balls to the wall down the hall when there could be guys around every corner or in every doorway and window of the kill houses/structures. This would mean that a couple kill houses could be placed within ten feet of each other to simulate a hallway. The more you have structures close together, the less Rambo acts that take place, and the more technical and paced the gameplay becomes. Just my thoughts (I have many..).

Linked kill house, oh yes please. :)

Id come often to east location.

The east end is crying for this. I'd look at the warehouse/industrial spaces off of Curity Ave. It's near transit, major roads. I'd be a regular, that's for sure.

Very solid location actually. I have driven through there and the real estate options are plentiful.

An east-end field may be coming to an east-end near you sooner than you think:

https://www.facebook.com/SiegeAirsoft

Their page says Scarborough

Nice find! Thanks for sharing, getting hyped!