Imagine if you can a cold wintery day in North East Ohio, 1985…
What sort of activities could you a 6-year-old boy do when there is a foot of snow on the ground? Well for me it was listening to stories on my 45 record player, filling in lots of coloring books, and creating endless adventures with either GI Joe, Star Wars, or He-Man figures. My birthday came in the Cold February winter too. So it looks like its birthday cake in the dining room with, sisters, parents, and grandma. I don’t know when bounce houses became the “it thing” but what I do know is now its 2020 and I’m the parent of a soon to be 5-year-old boy, Logan, and bouncing is a blast!
I’m Kevin York, owner-operator of Bull City Bounce. I’m a former Executive Chef who has spent 18 years in the hospitality industry and 6 in Foodservice sales and consulting. Bull City Bounce was developed in response to the ever-growing need for indoor active space for children and their families. North Carolina is growing…The Raleigh-Durham market grows 40 families moving in every day with a 9% rise in population since the 2010 census with forecasts to continue the trend. New Yorkers tired of the high cost of living and snowy dreary winters are flocking in droves. Californians are also following suit impressed with the job market, lower cost for housing, and close proximity to both beaches and mountains. Fifteen percent of the annual growth is from international families moving into the Research Triangle Park where job growth is high in technology, pharmaceutical, and Medical.
Durham, in particular, is a unique center for growth. Many dilapidated buildings have been removed and replaced with vertical high-rises centered around the Durham bulls Baseball stadium creating a walkable downtown with restaurants, bars, clubs, and bakeries. The Expansion of Freeway147, I40, and I85 splits downtown from East to West allowing commuting from the city into RTP to the south, Raleigh to the East, or Chapel Hill to the West swift (compared to traffic of NY, LA, DC) And with all this growth, the terrain and development has not changed. Durham has a large Urban and Suburban landscape with plenty of parks and walkways but few areas for activities, especially during the hot and humid Summer.
As a father of an energetic child, there have been multiple times where the humid heat of summer was unbearable, with very few options to let loose. A thirty-minute commute into downtown Raleigh, fighting one-way streets for parking, to get to a Marbles museum or twenty-minute commute to Chapel Hill, to fight the crowds of Kidzu Museum in its small venue. A favorite of Logan’s is Notasium, a music-based indoor play area; however, on multiple occasions, open play has been postponed for reserved birthday parties. And that is how Bull City Bounce came to be…start an indoor open play destination that is large enough to accept all who want to play! Create a space where families can celebrate yet not shut out those who want to explore. Create an environment designed for Open play and exploration then invite them back for the hospitality of a southern catered celebration.
The many neighborhoods in Durham county are compact, with limited amounts of open and flat ground for inflatable rentals in their yard. Since 2016, 67% of parents say the average amount spent on a birthday party for 10 children (without presents) was over $100 and nearly 25% say they spent over $300. Take the majority spending $100 for 10, it equates to $10 per person (not including the parents). Taking the monetary aspect out of the equation, Durham’s growth is a majority of working professionals where both parents work full time. Planning, shopping, preparing, executing, and cleaning up for an event can be exhausting. At Bull City Bounce, let our decades of experience in planning and executing your celebration put you at ease…and if you don’t want your child to binge on Netflix all day, stop in anytime where they can explore, exercise, bounce and beam!