David Geisler had been searching up and down the East Coast for a family entertainment center to purchase but had found nothing that tickled his inner kid. Then, last year he took a look at SeaBase in Greensburg, and there were bombs bursting in air. The Washington, Pa., native now living in Washington, D.C., saw a strong client base, decent location, but an 8-year-old facility that needed to be updated.
Now, some $125,000 later, Geisler has SeaBase where he wants it, and the results have been stunning. "We only measure the number of kids that come in the door, and on Saturdays we're getting 350 to 400 kids, so we estimate 1,000 general admission visitors," Geisler said. And that's not counting the 45 to 50 weekend birthday bashes, each with 12 to 15 kids plus parents.
The keys to making SeaBase a kid destination are multiple, including $50,000 spent on a refurbished and restocked arcade area, $30,000 worth of new carpeting, new paint, a general clean up, and rearranged traffic flow to make optimum use of the facility's 21,000 square feet of space. But perhaps the biggest change to SeaBase and certainly one of its main drawing cards now is its indoor bumper cars. But forget your vision of the old bumper cars at Kennywood: with a metal post reaching to the electrified ceiling and a piece of hard-rubber surrounding the car which, when struck, made your eyeballs wobble. The updated bumper cars are circular, battery operated, roll on wheels and are surrounded by rubber which actually absorbs bumps. "It's like a white water raft on wheels," according to Geisler.
With SeaBase humming, Giesler now is looking for other locations, perhaps in the Robinson Township area, or back home in Washington, Pa. Whatever the location, the new facility will be roughly double the footprint of SeaBase, probably 40,000 square feet of entertainment. But Greensburg will remain the base.
Falcone and Cipresse didn't have to go far to find new space; they simply moved up the hill along Pellis Road, and now are firmly camped in newly remodeled space at 440 Pellis Road. The relocation also allowed Custom-Eyes to nearly triple its space, to 835 square feet. With additional space comes additional products. Now, Falcone and Cipresse -- in addition to what, in effect, is cosmetic tattooing of eyebrows, and color for eyeliner and lips -- now sell a cosmeceutical line of makeup and skin care products. Cosmeceuticals are skin care products cosmetic companies develop and market as providing therapeutic effects for users.
