Indoor soccer is a huge business nationwide. Tom Higginson of Sports Marketing Group (619-637-5766), a national chain of "Let’s Play" indoor soccer centers headquartered in San Diego, posted reams of personal experience, wisdom and tips on how to choose a location, lease or build a building, make deals with pro shop and snack bar providers, what zoning boards and other governmental entities will do to you, and so on.

Higginson’s saga is entertaining, at least, and informative. According to Higginson, there are between 200 and 300 indoor soccer centers in the country, and that many being built every year, which means there is a high attrition rate. He looks for free-span buildings. It’s difficult to find them, he notes, and his tale of searching for them is worth reading. (See accompanying sidebar.) The buildings need to be 23,000 square feet or more and have 300,000 to 400,000 people within a 25-minute circle of the location. He even shows how to avoid bad locations that may meet those criteria.

"I saw a facility in San Diego that was five minutes from the Pacific Ocean," Higginson writes. "If you believe in my 25 minute circle theory, you have just lopped off 25% of your potential customer base. Dolphins play football, not soccer. In addition, since it was outside, at night the fog would roll in around the 10 p.m. game and the field would get real slippery, increasing your odds of player and spectator lawsuits. "In another city a facility was built right up against a river which had no accessible bridges within 15 minutes. So while they had a great customer base within 25 minutes, they couldn’t get to 50 percent of it because of access problems. Natural barriers are something to watch for. In business you do everything you can to increase your odds. Cutting off potential customers is not the way. I saw a facility in Denver which was on the northeast side of town. It was flush up against Stapleton Airport on one side, Rocky Mountain Arsenal on another, and the new airport. It was suicide. Nobody lives in any of those locations."

"I haven’t had much luck with real estate agents. I have found over 90% of the existing buildings on my own. I have driven many cities in the country in my 79 Ford Fairmont. It got up to about 400,000 miles before it finally got towed off. One of my neighbors kept reporting me to the smog enforcement division and pretty soon the tickets were more than the value of the car. I bought a 1981 Ford Fairmont with only 120,000 miles on it. It’s a puppy. Got another 300,000 miles to go."

On Higginson’s web site also is a model business plan that is packed with cogent information. "I have taken our last six business plans and merged them together to make a mythical business plan, but very close ... (to) business plans that we have submitted to SBA and been approved." The customer base is from eight to 60 years old, 70 percent male. Adults play year-round, with little drop-off in play during the outdoor season. Youth practice twice a week during outdoor play and play on the weekends. Adults play on the weekends and sometimes one weekday. Customers will travel 20 to 25 minutes. Youth games are 40 minutes long and adult games 50 minutes. When the drive to and from becomes longer than the playing time, players are more difficult to obtain. A freeway ramp within 10 minutes will increase the range of the 25-minute circle.

Higginson doesn’t fear competitors. "We have had competitors. Permian Basin (It’s a Kick) out of business. Salt Lake (Utah Indoor Soccer) closed for the summer and we purchased it in March of 1994. Denver, (Colorado Indoor Sports) went bankrupt and (Soccer Dome) moved one summer night leaving no forwarding address. In El Cajon (Lakeside Indoor Soccer) is a truck stop. In San Diego (Mission Valley Soccer Center) now a condominium project and (Sorrento Valley Soccer Center) folded three years ago selling their equipment to a group out of Mexico City."

When Higginson tired of searching for usable free span buildings, he began building his own and, once again, embarked on a new phase of education. "What a learning experience," he says. You build a full size field, 200 by 85 feet, in a building 210 by 110 feet, he says. "That’s 23,100 square feet. You still have room for player boxes, three rows of seating and adequate office space, bathroom, pro shop, and snack bar. Not much else however. I’m into simple." Now, he says, "I pretty much construct buildings 260 by 110 and put a big field and small field in them. Depending on the circumstances in the various cities some are larger and some are smaller but this is about average. The first building was 34,000 square feet. Yeah, I know. I just said I’m into simple and I didn’t build simple. I had an in-house tenant who wanted to lease. So I built extra room for him. He was already in a couple of our other buildings. However what he learned, that we had previously learned, when it comes to your first expansion, imagine everything that can go wrong, times that by four and you’ll be real close. Fortunately we found another tenant."

His costs were $130,000 for land, right around two acres, which is roughly 90,000 square feet. Then the 34,000-square-foot building came in at about $17.37 a foot. If you have to sprinkler the building you can add about $1.25 to $1.50 a foot, Higginson says. The costs include heat and air conditioning, office space, finishing out the bathrooms, and snack bar and pro shop space. As of May, 1998, Higginson said, his costs were about $20 a foot in six states. "I will tell you that costs are increasing pretty rapidly and they are up about 15% from a couple of years ago when I began building," he said.

Higginson has built soccer centers in every way imaginable, and says he has found it much easier to find vacant land than existing free-span buildings. But new construction is fraught with its own set of special nightmares. Here are some of his hard-earned lessons.

"If you can find land zoned recreational it will save you time and money. Except in Vegas. Recreational in Vegas is apparently for casinos. Recreational is the cheapest, industrial or ‘light manufacturing,’ depending on the city, is next, commercial is the worst.

Unless it’s recreational you’ll have to get a variance. Some industrial areas don’t allow metal buildings. They want you to spruce up the front of the buildings to either make them brick or look like brick."

Beware of recreational zoning, Higginson warns. It is "not the dream I thought it was. If you don’t make it for whatever reason there is not much you can do with the building. You rarely can get your zoning changed to warehouse. You’re in trouble if you don’t make it."

Things to know about new construction: "You must have some green area..." Parking requirements vary. "If you have a single-field facility you can probably survive on 50 to 60 but it’s tight. Most cities have some sort of regulation, based on either square footage or seating, whether you need sprinklers. If you put your bathrooms and snack bar in the part of the building closest to the street you’ll save some sewer and water costs."

"Some industrial parks require brick facade or concrete on either the whole building or in most cases the side facing the street, (Phoenix, Northglenn (Denver), Shreveport), in some instances you can get away with just four feet high and in others just brick the columns. Boise has massive hook-up fees, it was around $30,000 something.

"If somebody finds bones while they are digging you’re screwed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, enealogical Society, and several more organizations you’ve never heard of will show up and halt your construction/financing/purchase (Tucson three times). If you’re backed up to an Air Force base don’t plan on being able to use their water/sewer/gas/electric connections. You will have to bore under the freeway to get access (San Antonio). "If somebody was once going to build a huge sports arena on your site for a pro team and the city voted that sports arenas require a minimum of ten acres you will inherit that requirement because you area sports arena and have to buy all ten acres (New York). Know for sure where you’re utility hook-ups are before you pave your parking lot (Colorado Springs). You get an assessment for weird animals that are in short supply (Boise desert hare?).

"Encinitas California told me they don’t want indoor soccer in their city because they saw all those riots in Europe and they don’t want that happening in their city. A few years later they gave the YMCA permission to build an indoor soccer facility which they did."

"Usually there is a ten foot easement to build within a property line and you can extend it to 20 feet for streets. If you paint your ceiling white after the sprinkler heads have been installed the fire marshall will show up and make you replace all the heads that have sprinkles of paint on them (about $15,000, Edmond Oklahoma, not my facility)."

"We own the local soccer magazine so we can run articles about our facilities to the soccer community," Higginson said. A soft drink manufacturer provides us with scoreboards in exchange for putting their product in our facility. We have quality staff that we can use from (nearby facility we own) should we have a shortfall. "We will bring our best people in numbers to insure the facility has a strong beginning. A new business (or revised one) takes maximum effort to get off the ground and the first six months are crucial. "Soon each facility will be hooked to the others by modem. Salt Lake enters its problem at night when it leaves and each facility leaves a potential solution to browse when Salt Lake comes in. The follow up process never ends. San Diego and El Cajon have modems hooked up and use them to communicate between each other and S.M.G., there are still a few bugs to work out but the idea is working well.