Deep impact - Owners have big plans for Underground Paintball
By Jeremiah Tucker
1/27/06
The 15-acre cave with 25-foot ceilings could have just as easily ended up transformed into a storage facility where people could pay to leave their boats during the winter months.
At one point, the owners discussed turning all that looming, dark space into a mushroom farm or a warehouse.
Instead, they drained the old mining cavern, installed an extensive drainage system to keep it dry, laced the ceiling and walls with electricity that lit up the pitch-blackness, dropped in some crashed-up, hollowed-out cars and opened Underground Paintball.
The paintball facility is located at 4301 Jakes Road, north of Missouri Southern State University on Duquesne Road.
¡°The first time I went into the cave I was just like, ¡®Wow,¡¯¡± said Cliff Eisenbarger, who works at the Underground Paintball pro-shop and travels the country attending paintball tournaments.
Riding in an all-terrain vehicle zooming along the immense valleys and dunes of the extensive undeveloped expanse of the cave¡¯s interior, manager Shawn Dodson said, ¡°This part was all under water.¡±
Dodson, who is in charge of day-to-day operations, said that extensive planning went into Underground Paintball, which is one of the largest indoor paintball facilities in the country.
He said that taming the old mining cave wasn¡¯t always with paintball in mind.
Dodson said he had played paintball before he decided to go into business with Newton Sharp, who owns the cave and the surrounding property, and Brian Murphy, president of Underground Paintball, but he said he had never played it ¡°hardcore.¡±
In their discussions about what business the cave could eventually become, he said that he and the other owners eventually recognized the lack of entertainment options in Joplin. The immensity and uniqueness of the cave, with its massive pillars and year round 60-degree climate, seemed especially suited to paintball.
When they opened in late 2004, Dodson said, a lot of money and time had already been spent getting the cave into shape for the public.
Entering the cave is almost like visiting an underground military compound, with an entrance cut into the stone facade large enough for dump trucks, while finding abandoned cars and geometric-shaped cover for firefights inside is similar to stepping into some post-apocalyptic future.
Well, except for the signs everywhere to remind you to check your equipment, wear your safety glasses and other general admonitions about safety.
¡°The primary purpose in life (at Underground Paintball) is the safety of the customer,¡± Dodson said.
While the gargantuan interior of the cave is the primary draw, the above-ground area at Underground Paintball is also shaping up to be what he said will be one of the best paintball parks in the country.
With over 500 acres of land, there is already two professional ¡°Super-7¡± fields being built with stadium lighting.
¡°The two fields meet the exact qualifications of a national-level field,¡± Dodson said.
There is also a sprawling castle area for all-out, above-ground paintball warfare.
¡°Here the castle is unique in that it¡¯s made of stone,¡± Dodson said. ¡°Most others are made of wood.¡±
There are also big plans for the future of Underground Paintball.
Dodson said they are currently focusing on creating different environments for scenarios for paintballers to play out. For instance, he said, one scenario might include one team trying to kill the president of another team, but the assassination team won¡¯t know who the president is.
Within a month, he said, Underground Paintball should have a mining town built inside the cavern for a more interactive environment.
And come Halloween, part of the dark cavern will be used for what should be a terrifying haunted house, and part of the cavern that was used for a recent cage-fighting event will permanently become an event center capable of seating 2,000 people.
But the focus of Underground Paintball will remain paintball.
Eisenbarger, who said he goes through withdrawal if he doesn¡¯t play paintball at least a couple times a week, said the regulation professional fields could draw in national tournaments, and the expansion of the cave will also continue to attract new customers.
¡°When (the park is) finished, we should be the largest in the country,¡± Eisenbarger said.
Dodson said that his goal is to make Underground Paintball one of the ¡°biggest, most popular and well-known parks in the country.¡±
With the amount of space they have in the cave and above ground, he said the possibilities for new environments, scenarios and fields is limitless.
¡°Honestly, it¡¯s all about imagination,¡± he said.
Source: http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=223342&c=106 |