One of the world's largest indoor playgrounds was built in part by a Langley-based company, work that highlights the prominence of Metro Vancouver companies in the booming playground construction sector.
Iplayco Corp. Ltd. (IPC:TSX Venture) built the soft play area for Billy Beez, a 25,000-square-foot indoor entertainment centre for children that's managed by the Arabian Centres Ltd. Co. and located in Saudi Arabia's Mall of Dhahran. The playground opened on May 25.
As a result, Iplayco is on track to generate more than $15 million in 2013 sales – its biggest year ever.
Port Coquitlam's Orca Coast is similarly poised for its best year with $3.5 million in sales. And Richmond water-park builder WhiteWater West Industries Ltd. generates approximately $100 million annually, including sales from its playground manufacturing division PrimePlay.
But the playground companies don't play together.
"There's not so much teaming up between us. We're more at each other's throats," Orca Coast president Bill Dunbar told Business in Vancouver.
Orca Coast, like Iplayco, generates most of its revenue outside Canada, which illustrates the rise in the number of play centres is a worldwide phenomenon.
Other Iplayco playgrounds built for Arabian Centres Ltd. Co. are in its Aziz Mall in Jeddah and its Khurais Mall in Riyadh.
The concept of playgrounds is also changing and morphing with museum exhibits.
Dunbar said malls and entertainment centres are increasingly hiring childhood development specialists who want more sophisticated games where kids learn. This means exhibits that teach as well as have a physical aspect.
"Play centre owners today know that they can't just have a slide and arcade games," Dunbar said. "It has to be more than that."
Orca Coast has graduated to larger and more sophisticated projects and recently completed work at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. It includes a $75,000 slide that simulates the exact arc at which a space shuttle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.
It also built a polar bear exhibit at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Zoo that includes an interactive, projected simulation of ice cracking, creating melting ice floes underfoot as visitors attempt to cross a river.
Most Orca Coast projects now generate about $250,000 each, although the company still does smaller jobs such as a $90,000 job to rebuild the playground at Granville Island's Adventure Zone.
Richmond pool hall owner Stan Wong bought Adventure Zone last summer and has since largely revamped the nearly 20-year-old facility. Business has picked up since the three-week playground reconstruction in June, though Wong is not sure whether that is because of the new playground or because it is peak tourist season.
For Dunbar, working on the playground was sentimental given that he helped build the original playground when he was a PrimePlay employee in the early 1990s.
Strength in the playground sector is fuelled by demand from parents who are increasingly concerned about their children's fitness and safety.
"Kids in urban centres aren't getting the chance to run around outside because of fear of predators or fear of accidents," Dunbar said.
Iplayco CFO Max Liszkowski believes parents are also concerned that their kids are getting fat because they spend too much time in front of console games. Canada's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention underscored this fear in July, when it noted that childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years.
