Steven and Sharon Zukerman at their Life The Place to Be, a family entertainment and special events center opening in Ardsley.
Pursuing one”™s American dream can be a tough haul in a recession. An entrepreneurial couple from Irvington, Steven and Sharon Zukerman, can attest to that.
The Zukermans and their partners in Funtasia USA L.L.C. in May will open an approximately 29,000-square-foot special events and family entertainment center in a former trucking warehouse on Lawrence Street in the town of Greenburgh, just off the Saw Mill River Parkway and outside the village of Ardsley. Life The Place to Be, their center will be called. Yet a few wintry months ago, it seemed their dream might be dead, the victim of a frozen credit market.
The Zukermans thought they had secured financing for their $3-million investment with a Small Business Administration loan commitment from a leading New York City-based lender to small and mid-sized businesses. Expecting to open in February, they began construction in the lofty 100-year-old brick warehouse in September. “And then the economy fell off the face of the Earth,” Sharon Zukerman said.
The couple waited as the bank delayed closing on their SBA loan. They thought the lender”™s receipt of about $2.3 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department”™s Troubled Asset Relief Program in late 2008 might free up their stalled loan, but it did not.
After three extensions on the closing, “In January we had to make a decision,” Sharon Zukerman said. “We burned through over three months”™ rent waiting for the bank to close the loan.”
“We were $500,000 in and we were about to walk away,” her husband said.
Instead they went to friends and family, enlisting more investors and borrowing from their parents”™ retirement funds. After touring the warehouse, guided by the Zukermans”™ entrepreneurial vision for the space, lenders at their local community bank, Sunnyside Federal Savings and Loan, approved a first mortgage on their Irvington home. Life The Place to Be was resuscitated.
Steve Zukerman brings 27 years of experience in the special events business to their enterprise. His company, Travesties Entertainment, which provides musical entertainment for private and corporate events, will move from its Elmsford office to the new center. At 42, Zukerman also brings to their enterprise a nimble agility that he might have occasion to display on the center”™s dance floor: “I”™m a Jewish break dancer from the ghettos of Melville, Long Island,” he said.
His Queens-bred wife, the daughter of Colombian immigrants, is a former fashion designer and merchandiser. She immediately saw the possibilities for the cavernous warehouse. Its transformation as a sleekly contemporary and adaptable New York City loft-style space with preserved industrial skylights was designed by architect Ken Hudes, principal of Atelier New York Architecture in Long Island City, Queens. With the partners on too tight a budget to afford the hired services of an interior designer, Sharon Zukerman has done much of the interior design and decoration planning.
“As special-event people, we knew there was a need for alternative event space” in Westchester, Steve Zukerman said. “We recognized that in Westchester County not only was there a need for alternative event space but a family fun center.”
The center will be open to the public for full-service birthday parties and as a venue for corporate meetings and events, where bowling, laser tag and arcade games will provide recreation during breaks in business. The center”™s event room can seat 600 to 700 people for corporate meetings and, with the dance floor in place, can accommodate up to 550 people.
Abigail Kirsch will be the center”™s exclusive events caterer, an arrangement that sprang from Travesties Entertainment”™s work at parties at the Kirsches”™ Tappan Hill Mansion in Tarrytown. “Jim Kirsch is a visionary,” Steve Zukerman said of the second-generation head of the catering and events management company. “He sees outside the box. This is an alternative space for him.”
Departing from the standard business model, the family entertainment part of the business will operate on a members-only basis, with families paying an annual membership fee of $325. Though an open center would bring in more revenue, the couple, with their own two daughters in mind, “decided to go this way because it”™s safer, it”™s more family-oriented,” Steve Zukerman said. They hope to sign up 1,200 members.
The facilities include a central caf̩ in the buildingӪs rotunda; 56 arcade games; a rock-climbing wall and play structure for children; four mini-bowling alleys in a 1,300-square-foot space and a laser tag room, with an anteroom where those waiting in line to play can watch the action on plasma screens. The padded play room can quickly be converted to the dimly lit setting of a nightclub or lounge for adults. The Zukermans said the warehouse also could be used by outside companies for sound studio work and video productions.
The couple has tapped business talent in their own neighborhood and nearby river towns to staff their start-up operation. One stay-at-home mom with a background in hospitality and food service will return to work as the center”™s cafe manager; another has put together its youth summer camp program, which already has 15 contracts from camps in the metropolitan area. The business”™s off-site computer data storage and information technology services are provided by a neighbor on the Zukermans”™ Irvington street who started his own company after taking a severance package from Citibank.
“It”™s a different model,” Steve Zukerman said of their enterprise. “It”™s a little out of the box. It”™s truly a unique concept.”
Watching from a mezzanine while contracting crews raised noise and ladders and chalky dust as opening day drew closer, the Zukermans smiled broadly as their vision at last took shape in the old warehouse.
“You have a dream and you”™ve got to take a leap ”“ a leap of faith,” Sharon Zukerman said. “This is America. This is what you do ”“ take chances.”
