Photo by Howard Owens
Something seems to be happening in downtown Batavia, at City Centre in particular, as properties are either bought or leased and business owners are taking a chance on investing in what city officials are hoping is becoming an economic revival of the former mall.
One of the latest merchants to be entering the scene in the near future is another moveover from Harvester Complex. Eric and Sarah Jones, owners of Game of Throws, are planning to initially build two escape rooms and eventually have three, plus axe-throwing in the space formerly occupied by Gentleman Jim’s, Palace of Sweets, Shortstop and The Hiding Place.
“We're hoping by June or July we'll be able to move in and be ready to open for business, at least with our lanes and our axe throwing. We're hoping that at least one, if not two, of the Escape Rooms, will be ready to go,” Sarah said during an interview with The Batavian. “But Escape Rooms are a lot; they're a lot of work, a lot of planning. There are a lot of their prop-making props.
The Jones couple of Oakfield had wanted to have escape rooms at the Harvester location, but the physical set-up, with high ceilings and poor acoustics, didn’t allow for what was needed to make it work well, Sarah said. Game of Throws survived the pandemic since opening in early 2021, and now it’s time to push past those limitations and get into the fun creativity — albeit more expensive — work of pulling together an hour’s worth of brain-teasing props, clues and puzzles that stretch one’s imagination and prompt teamwork to meet the objective: escape.
Sarah offered a hint that the first room being assembled is a pirate theme, and visitors will have to free themselves from a ship jail before time is up for them to walk the plank. If you think this might be a lame Monopoly-type board game, these rooms come at great expense ($10,000 to $20,000 and up) and endless hours of labor to craft the related lifelike props and clues — perhaps keys and maps and items that hint at the next needed steps to take.
“Basically, we take you in, we literally lock you in prison. So there's a jail cell in the very beginning that you're all in. You have to figure out how to get out of the prison to get into the other part of the room, where there's all kinds of pirate stuff, and there's maps, and there's clues, and there's things that you're going to find, you're going to figure out, you're going to put together locks and keys, and then eventually you will find the final key to escape,” she said. “And there's a big clock counting down for 60 minutes, so you'll know how long you're taking. And we always have someone watching you and working with you. So if it takes you too long to get out of the first part of it, we'll start to talk to you and say, ‘Okay, you guys are on the right track, but look for, you know, whatever, keep your eyes open for this,’ so that we can sort of walk you through better ways to figure out and get out of certain things.
“We want everyone to be able to get out, but we also don't want to be like, the whole time telling you hints and clues. You have to see for yourself,” she said. “So with that being said, there's a lot of interesting things, like different riddles that you have to sort of figure out different combinations of things you have to do in order for a door to unlock with a mag lock, which means there's a lot of wiring, and there's a lot of mechanical things that we have to put in there to trigger things. So it's a lot, but it's fun.”
Why escape rooms? Sarah and her husband seek out and do escape rooms “all the time,” she said.
“Every time we go somewhere or go on a trip or wherever we’re somewhere, we always look for escape rooms. We’ve gone to basically all the escape rooms in Buffalo and Rochester that we have been able to find; we love escape rooms,” she said. “We go with friends. We go with different people that do an escape room. We do it with our kids; they love them too.”
Why, what is it about escape rooms that you like so much?
“They're all different. You never know what's gonna happen, what's gonna be in them. Some of them are amazing, some of them are terrible. And we're like, well, that was just stupid. But even just getting together, and all of you working together as a group, it's really interesting to see the dynamics even of the way people think, the way people figure things out,” she said. “Some people that are really good at noncommon sense things, really smart things, figure out the stuff that I would never be able to figure out. I'm more of a think-outside-the-box: look, I found this, how does this work? Where other people are like, oh, there's numbers. They see combinations of things because they get numbers, where I don't get numbers.
She talked about how she usually butts heads with her daughter Marissa, so it would seem natural that when the family goes to an escape room, Marissa would pair off with her dad, and Mom would go with her son Ryan. But that’s not how it works when solving these types of reality puzzles, she said.
Ryan and Eric work super well together, and the way their minds work, and Marissa and I tend to work super well together. So it's really neat to do escape rooms with people because it's a whole different experience,” she said. “When I first heard about escape rooms, I was like, I want to do one of those. It sounds so cool. So we've done them years and years and years ago. And I had said to my husband, I want to open up escape rooms. That would be the funnest job ever. I love everything about them. And then my brother-in-law in Pennsylvania, years later, had opened up the escape rooms, and I'm like, you understand, that's my dream come true.”
Sarah has been able to, at least in part, experience the operational side of these rooms by helping out her in-laws when possible, from building props such as a full-blown monkey body, face, and limbs, down to its fingernails to offering hints to misguided participants. As she puts it, “It's not like we're coming into this with no experience, but we also are coming into this with no experience.”
“And we're just like, we got this, but it's something super new,” she said. “And so it's gonna be so much fun. I'm super excited about it.”
The market is hot for this too, she said, as they are extremely popular and exist all over the country. She and Eric have done several in Florida and even found them in the Dominican Republic, she said.
The glitch may be that this business doesn’t often get repeat customers unless it’s people bringing others to experience the escape room. One solution the Jones’ have that others may not be so fortunate to have is that connection with the in-laws in Pennsylvania. They know that their customers aren’t likely to have seen the escape rooms here, and vice versa, so they plan to swap with each other at some point and continue a rotation with fresh themes the next time around.
It will still mean a major investment of thousands of dollars but it saves them at least a couple of times before they need to invest in brand-new themes again. For customers, it will be an updated adventure. There’s a Facebook marketplace, sort of a co-op for escape room goods, and these used packages can still cost $20,000 to $30,000, she said. And it’s not like once you’ve purchased it, you’re done: these rooms have to be refreshed to keep customers coming back.
Being a small business owner has come with its share of frustrations, including a lack of funding options that are more often available to large developers and corporate businesses, she said. She credited Batavia Development Corporation and Executive Director Tammy Hathaway for pursuing avenues for small grants or low-interest loans, but so far, nothing has been available or suitable for their situation, Sarah said.
The Jones couple is grateful that the property owners and city have allowed them to begin working on the space before officially moving in — with flashlights and lanterns in tow since there’s no electricity or HVAC hook-up yet and a leaky roof is to be repaired. That gives them some time to get set up while still being at their current location at 56 Harvester Ave., Sarah said.
“So that when they do say, ‘ok, it’s time,’ we can have basic stuff that we need done so we can actually get in there as soon as possible. Because once they say it’s ready, then we have to start paying rent,” she said. “And we’re willing to pay rent to both places until we can get into the other one, so we’re hoping that by the time we can get in there and have to start paying rent, we’ll have it so much done that we can literally just move our lanes from Games of Throws into Gentleman Jim’s and get it up and running, that’s what we’re hoping for.”
How does she feel about the big move? "Excited and terrified."
She asks if she’s crazy. Well, yes. Then again, former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
The Jones’ vision goes beyond the walls of their future business and spills (hopefully) onto the outer concourse in the form of community events, such as square dancing, cornhole tournaments, karaoke nights, and other fun events. In other words, they may do a little world-changing in downtown Batavia.
“I feel like that is going to bring so many people out because there is nothing to do in Batavia. So what we’re hoping is that we will bring more business to Batavia, too. We have a lot of people who come throw axes at our place from Buffalo and Rochester. They literally drive by the places in Buffalo to get to us. So we’re hoping that we can bring business to the other businesses,” she said. “A lot of times, people are like, we’re not from around here, but where is there to go eat? And we definitely try to tell them of locally owned businesses as opposed to chains. So I hope that we’ll all work together to bring more business to Batavia.”
Photo by Howard Owens.
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