BRAZIL, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — A building with a long history of shared space is offering new opportunities for small businesses like the Mystery Lounge.
The Emporium, located at 2 E. National Ave in Brazil, is the name of the building that houses a collection of shops run by local, small businesses.
“The vision is that I’m building a place for small businesses to kind of come and thrive and work together to help each other succeed and everything,” said the owner of the Emporium Chris Godfrey.
Staying true to the history of the location, the site of the Emporium was once the location of a bank and hardware store that eventually combined into one building. The Emporium now houses several small, local businesses such as the American Aikido Institute, Nailed It! salon, and more, including the soon-to-open Mystery Lounge.
“So with the bank and that hardware store, basically, the hardware store got absorbed by the bank and so in the 50s there was a building remodel and it became both buildings essentially. So they all they’ve formed like one,” Godfrey explained. “There’s been a whole bunch of businesses in and out of there and I know that the American Aikido Institute, they’ve been there since the mid to late 80s. I remember them from when I was a kid,” he added.
As a puzzle enjoyer, geocacher, and a father to three teenagers, co-owner of the Mystery Lounge, Paul Baty said he often heard complaints of not having much to do in the city. After asking his kids what they would like to have in the city and hearing an escape room as an answer, Baty decided to make the dream a reality and discussed a little about his plans for the room.
“There is room for probably 2 decent sized escape rooms and then, I’m also wanting to do something a little different that I’ve never seen, I think they’re out there, but a single-person escape room, it’d be like a little closet kind of area with some things you have to do to get out of that. We’re wanting to have a little space where people can just come in and hang out, sit down, eat some snacks, play games with friends, board games, card games, puzzles or whatever, stuff like that,” Baty explained.
In the meantime, the Mystery Lounge Facebook will be hosting an online puzzle contest that will allow the winner to bring three friends to participate in a test run of the escape room.
“Basically, it’s a puzzle, that is a little bit different than escape room puzzles because escape room puzzles you have all the information in the room with you, with these I’m doing on Facebook, you’re probably going to figure out how to do it then you’ve got to use Google or other programs to figure out the actual answer. So right now we’re running contests to get people to be our testers. So if they win the puzzle they get to bring 3 friends with them for free to do a test run of the first room.”
The next online puzzle will be announced at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 9. No themes have been announced for the escape rooms just yet, but Baty explained that they will get access to the space on January 1 and will start building.
“There’s one already closed-off room that we’re getting, and one of my ideas can fit in that. We don’t get access until Jan 1. But we think we can probably get it going in two or three weeks. So hopefully the middle to end of January. We’ll have one room available and then the rest of it we’ll just build out as time allows. We just want to get one thing going to where people can go ahead and start coming in and getting things done.”
While the Mystery Lounge prepares to open for the new year, the Emporium will be holding a Winter Vendor’s Market on December 16 that will include about 30 vendors.
“It’s just gonna benefit all the business owners, and I’m so happy to accommodate that because that’s essentially my mission right now. Once I get this space filled with all these people, my mission is to just make them as successful as I can. You know, just get people in here so we can get community support. That’s going to be integral for for these guys to stay in business for a long time,” Godfrey said.
