Indoor trampoline park proposed in Bend

A Texas couple want to bring a business concept popular in the Lone Star state to Bend — an indoor trampoline park.

Brad and Rendy Tucker, of Frankston, Texas, and originally of Clarkston, Washington, submitted a plan to the city of Bend for Mountain Air Trampoline Park, with a prospective opening in the fall.

“Down here in Texas, trampoline parks are popular; they’ve got them everywhere,” Brad Tucker said. “We’ve been taking our kids to them and thought surely they have them in Bend. When we found out they didn’t, we jumped on the opportunity.”

The couple said they have planned for some time to make a home in the High Desert. “Things happened, and you gotta go pay off student debt,” Brad Tucker said, “and we went off in a different direction for a while.”

The Tuckers leased three suites, a combined 14,518 square feet, in the Murray Road Industrial Center, the former Fuqua Homes factory, on Boyd Acres Road in northeast Bend. The trampolines would occupy about 7,500 square feet in several courts, said Brad Tucker, who is a dentist. The plan calls for viewing areas, walkways and a small cafe serving packaged foods, he said.

“The main court is for what we call free jumping,” he said, “for whatever you want to be doing. There will be 20-plus trampolines in there. It’s up to your imagination what you want to do.”

Backflips, handsprings and jumping into a giant airbag are common practices at trampoline parks, the Taylors said. The park will also have a court dedicated to trampoline dodge ball and rooms for events like birthday parties or corporate gatherings, the Taylors said. The park will have places for smaller children to play separately to avoid injury.

“We tried to address the issue of safety in the way we planned the court,” Rendy Tucker said. “We have four children, ages 10 to 3, and whenever we go as a family we don’t let the 3-year-old on the court with the 10-year-olds. It’s just not safe.”

Brad Tucker said he plans on hiring a general manager and 25 to 40 others for mainly part-time, entry-level jobs. He also plans on resuming his dental practice in Bend.

The city Community Development Department is still processing the application, which needs a traffic impact report, wrote Aaron Henson, senior planner. Another prospective industrial center tenant, Rally Cross Fit, also has applied to occupy a suite in the building, he wrote.

The Tuckers said their hunt for an appropriate space for their trampoline park in either Bend or Redmond yielded only one location, the Murray Road site.

Investors Brad and Melissa Kent bought the 115,000-square-foot structure for $2.7 million in December 2013, then converted it into 15 individual suites with an 18-foot forklift passageway down the center.

Brian Fratzke, whose firm, Fratzke Commercial Real Estate is the broker for the property, said Friday he’s leased about 67,000 square feet in the building, most of it since December.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com