First steps underway in making Big Air Trampoline Park a reality

It was announced three weeks ago that Big Air Trampoline Park will be coming to the former BI-LO location in Laurens. They are now one step closer to making it a reality.

While still in the early stages, the business is looking to be opened by Christmas at the earliest. The 40,000 square foot facility on West Main Street has just completed the demolition and clean out process of the remaining parts that were in the previous grocery store.

The person behind all of this, Jake Cooper, said that right now they’re at the current stage of designing and looking at the floorplans of trampolines within the park.

“The design part is always fun because I mean, you're trying to take into account how many different people want to have the park. It’s trying to blend all that together and I want it to just feel welcoming to everybody,” Cooper said.

Cooper, who already owns Riverside Garage and Tire on both West Main and North Harper Street, says that this is one of the exciting parts of creating a new business due to the ability to be creative.

“Coming from the mechanical background with automotives, you get to dissect the building and then put it back together just like we do with cars. We look at what was there and then we try to see anything else we can fit in there. It’s kind of like putting a puzzle together really because you can move each piece to any corner,” Cooper said.

The recent step made was clearing out what was there before. That included an HVAC system and taking out all of the 12 to 13 foot drop-ceiling. All of that resulted in 10 to 15 dumpsters worth of debris being what’s left.

“We spend our evenings a lot of times going over there, setting up what we believe the size of an attraction will be and kind of visualizing, walking around it. What does it feel like and what can we do with each attraction,” Cooper said.

The next step after the layout and floor planning is getting an initial 3D design and bringing it to the city for review. Once that is complete, he wants the opinions from the people of Laurens.

“Ultimately, without the community, the park can’t survive and that's our whole goal is where we're investing a lot of funds and a lot of energy into something that I feel like Lauren deserves,” Cooper said.

The main thing Cooper learned so far is how large an undertaking like this is, saying it’s “like repairing a car on a scale ten-fold”.

“It takes hundreds of hours of development and studying. It takes more time to do than I thought it would. Everything has to be perfect and you're just doing it on a much, much larger scale,” Cooper said.

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