New spot locked in
Escape room business moves to bigger home
AN explosion in popularity of so-called escape rooms on the Gold Coast has led an outfit to break out of its current tenancy and lease another four times the size.
Padlock’d co-owners Sean Wilson and Darren Moes are shifting their escape rooms from premises in Cavill Mall to a new space in the former Dracula’s Haunted House at 3177 Surfers Paradise Blvd, Surfers Paradise.
In escape room games, teams of players combine to discover clues, solve puzzles and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in a set time. Players move from room to room as they finish the puzzles and tasks.
The Surfers Paradise Blvd property was home to the Haunted House attraction between 2003 and last year, when it closed. The TrickPic interactive photo gallery moved into the space briefly before shutting shop and leaving the space empty again.
Mr Wilson said their current premises were at capacity, with 20,000 people through the doors since January.
“We’re breaking out of that because we ran out of space. We are at full capacity,” he said. “We tested the market on a small scale and it has been hugely popular so this is the next logical step.”
The new building offers 845sq m across four levels compared to the current 200sq m.
Padlock’d will offer 10 new rooms compared to four, with themes including a haunted toy store and a robbery of a museum. There are also more family-friendly rooms.
“Each room is designed completely different from the rest and purpose-built to hide everything that needs to be hidden,” he said.
“It takes about six weeks from designing a room to fitout and then testing to see it works as it should.”
The pair plan to close the old premises in January and open up in the new location in the same month.
Mr Wilson said they had been able to fund the move from cashflow.
The popularity of escape rooms was due to the “immerse experiences’’.
“People want something more than walking through a scary room. They like to get involved, it is all about immersive reality,” he said.
Marketing agent Rudi Scutti, of Geon Property, negotiated the lease with CBRE’s Jordon Aylward.
He said owner Newman Entertainment decided that rather than seek a change of use for the building, it would target entertainment attractions similar to previous tenants.
He said the building was upgraded, including electrical, fire and airconditioning systems as well as new flooring, before being offered to the market.
Mr Aylward said Padlock’d had a number of options but found other buildings required too much time and money to fit out. Padlock’d has signed a three-year lease with a threeyear option.