Grand Prix New York in Mount Kisco is spinning off 30,000 square feet of track space for a new boutique bowling center.
GPNY hopes to strike a profit after investing $2 million in Spins Bowl. It anticipates adding 20 to 30 staff positions.
The 118,000-square-foot GPNY meetings, racing and entertainment facility opened February 2008 on about three acres of what used to be a Grand Union warehouse and distribution center.
“We”™re an 18-to-34 male demographic (weekday nights) and heavy corporate during the week,” said Nat Mundy, co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing of GPNY. “About a year and a half ago, we started doing kids go-karting as well and we”™ve seen the family demographic come in and I think the bowling will really change the demographic quite a bit. Women”™s bowling leagues are one of the fastest-growing activities in the country.”
Spins Bowl houses 12 family lanes and seven VIP lanes that come furnished with leather couches and dining service from the facility”™s in-house restaurant and caterer Fuel.
The brainstorm for bowling began two years ago when Grand Prix pinned expansion as a viable means of business survival.
“In October 2008, we really lost a lot of our corporate events,” Mundy said. “That Christmas season was a disaster. It became ”˜illegal”™ for corporations to spend money on offsite events and were criticized heavily for doing so.”
Corporate meetings have come back slowly; a majority of business ”“ 60 percent ”“ comes from Fairfield County alone.
“Fairfield has UBS, RBS, Thomson Reuters, Citibank, Greenwich Capital, all the major hedge funds,” Mundy said.
Grand Prix gives executives a run for their money through a pseudo-NASCAR pit stop tire change and other team-building activities.
“Our best clients tend to be the financial firms as well as the Fortune 500s of Westchester, like GE, PepsiCo and Diageo (in Norwalk, Conn.)”
As a means of giving back and dually getting word out to the community, Grand Prix New York on Nov. 18 will host “Strikes Against Cancer Bowl-A-Thon” for Support Connection in Yorktown Heights as well as a “Novembowl” benefit Nov. 17 for the Music Therapy Institute at The Music Conservatory of Westchester.
