Building a weekly LAN Party Game Center

I’m entertaining the thought of opening up a year round, every weekend LAN party place in Toledo, Ohio.
I’ve been thinking it over and it seems like it would be fairly successful. There are over 5+ major cities within 2-4 hours from the location I have in mind. (Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Cincinnati)
The location is a closed down movie theater which has 6-8 screening rooms.

What I would like to do is convert 2-3 screens into business conference rooms and/or technical training areas for local businesses. This seems like it wouldn’t be a bad place to put on technical training for employees or even have business meetings with out-of-town clients. Fully networked room with 1-2 ceiling mounted projectors, plenty of room to hold 200 people, and I’m guessing I could have a competitive price to rent out the room for however long.

My main idea is to covert a few of these screening rooms into Gaming LANs for everyone. Ideally, each room would be able to support around 100-150 gamers and their equipment. With the movie screens still in place I’m hoping to use a few projectors to cast the image of the last few players of Counterstrike (and any other popular games out there, counterstrike not being my favorite, but one where it comes down to the last 2 on each team to win it) out there for everyone to watch the final showdowns. Maybe switch between tournament players when it comes down to two teams playing and its getting aggressive and intense, in another screening room, possibly a concession/coffee stand area/lounge. I could have 1 room strictly for those who wanted to watch the gamers play along with a café of some sort, 3-4 rooms for strictly gaming, and 2-3 rooms for conferencing (which might be easily converted into additional gaming areas if the need arises).

In all, I’d like to have the gaming center open Friday through Sunday, possibly Thursday through Sunday to allow for people to get in and get set up. Open Monday throuday Saturday for conference meetings.

For those who think the conference meetings with the gaming might get noisy, the place I have in mind has separate entrances and it’s a movie theater: its designed to keep noise from entering into the next room.

I don’t want this to become a full time job or the “make me rich scheme.” I do want it to pay for itself, possibly bring in small revenue for myself, but aim to be nonprofit. This is for entertainment, fees would be enough to cover upgrades, pay off any accumulated debt from the initial start up, etc. Granted, I’d probably have to have some employees who would be there for technical difficulties, etc. As far as the café/concession stand, I’m leaning towards getting a place to move into this location.

Here’s the kicker, the location is actually in a Mall complex. This mall has a small food court, restaurants surrounding the place, plenty of hotels (if gamers didn’t wish to stay with this equipment, which I assume they would, but hotels would benefit business people), video game store, movie store, etc. An ideal location to bring people in to spend their money, in which I’m hoping I could get a discount on renting the location out.

My main concern is repeatedly drawing in gamers every weekend to play. I would love to have support from Brand Name companies for bi-weekly tournaments, granted smaller prizes in doing so.

As far as the concessions, I’d hope to bring in an expanding place that would see this as a moneymaking opportunity.

Hey, maybe some of the Pros at Tom’s Hardware would want to pitch in and publish an article on “Designing the Tom’s Hardware gaming LAN center…”

Any takers? 

Thanks for your comments in advance, (feel free to shoot the idea down, I posted it here to get a broad range of input)

Mike
Toledo, Ohio