LONE TREE — In fat times and lean times, people always want to fly like a bird.
Bob Burke, managing partner of a group of local investors who five years ago launched the indoor skydiving center SkyVenture Colorado in Lone Tree, knows this well.
Throngs of eager fliers regularly crowd his stormy structure, where four massive fans move 2 million cubic feet of air through a 50-foot-tall, 12-foot-wide tunnel. During holidays such as Christmas and spring break, Burke will sell out weeks in a row to customers who pay $48 for two minutes of free-fall floating in Colorado’s windiest room.
It’s not just thrill seekers but military paratroopers seeking training and competitive skydivers from every corner of the planet who flock to SkyVenture Colorado.
“We didn’t really expect people to come from all over the world,” Burke said.
But those international visitors have helped buttress business during an economic downturn that has pinched leisure spending. A map next to the windowed wind tunnel boasts hundreds of pins, reflecting visitors from all over Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Greenland.
Another boon to Burke’s bottom line is increasing interest by military paratroopers, who account for 16 percent of his business, up from 10 percent in 2008-09.
“Pick this up,” he said, pointing to a rucksack assembled by a visiting team of soldiers. It weighs at least 50 pounds.
Soon, Matt Booth, a U.S. parachuting soldier, straps the pack between his legs, shoulders his parachute and flies in the wind tunnel for several minutes, practicing his control of the hefty pack pinched between his knees. The tunnel prepares Booth and his teammates for high-altitude jumps and low-altitude deployments. A few minutes in a wind tunnel and they’ve had as much free-fall time as in several jumps from an airplane.
“The more you train, the better you are,” said one of Booth’s fellow soldiers. (Military guidelines prevented them from speaking on the record or identifying their home base.)
Five years after Burke’s investment team spent four years and $4.5 million developing and constructing the building, SkyVenture has 23 tunnels in nine countries, and indoor skydiving has its own competitive league.
SkyVenture franchises operations through four brands, with its latest wind tunnels opening in Singapore, Seattle and Dubai. The company, according to franchise information on its website, expects the global market for indoor skydiving to reach $1.6 billion in revenue by 2025.
Burke and his team were ahead of the curve, establishing the fourth indoor skydiving facility in the country in 2006. They own their operation but pay SkyVenture licensing fees to use its name and technology. While the downturn has slowed their growth, it hasn’t cut deep.
Thanks to aggressive marketing across the country, revenues at SkyVenture have grown roughly 14 percent this year, up from 3 percent in the 2008-09 season.
“Imagine where we’d be if the economy had remained strong,” said Burke, who expects the last few weeks of the year to push revenue growth closer to last year’s 22 percent jump.
Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning regularly cruises by the SkyVenture parking lot and relishes the collection of rental cars.
“It’s an asset for Lone Tree and an asset for the region and, really, an asset for the state,” Gunning said. “There aren’t many of those facilities out there, and it’s a real draw for our city. It puts Lone Tree on the map outside Colorado.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an error, Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning’s name was spelled incorrectly. We regret the mistake.
