Model Case: Independent Competitive Socializing Venue With Full Bar in Fishers, Hamilton County, Indiana, SBA 504

A model feasibility case built only from public data. The building, borrower and concept are hypothetical; no client file or engagement data is used. The case follows the house format: at a glance, determination, program eligibility, site and regulatory pathway, market analysis, full cost table, operating assumptions, ten-year pro forma, DSCR by year, break-even, sensitivities, valuation indication and conditions. Figures are as of October 9, 2026. Part of the restaurant feasibility study cluster; format detail on the bar and nightclub feasibility study and food hall feasibility study pages, program detail on the SBA 504 feasibility study page, and the state frame on the Indiana feasibility study page.

The project is not feasible as proposed. A ground-up 25,000 SF venue on a purchased pad costs $12,767,505 inside the 504 project, $13,102,505 in all, and bowling alleys are a named special-purpose property, so a new business contributes 20 percent and borrows $10,214,004, which costs $915,228 a year on a 25-year amortization. The venue earns $733,559 at stabilization, 20.3 percent of $3,607,060 of revenue, and covers 0.80x in year 3 and 0.51x in year 1. The revenue that would carry the proposed debt at 1.15x is $3,852,296 in year-1 dollars, 13 percent above the plan and 20 percent above the $3.2 million that Lucky Strike's 365 locations average; at 1.25x it is $3,982,081. The brands that built the format did not carry this cost: Topgolf funded about a quarter of venue cost in cash with landlords and REITs funding the rest, and Puttshack covers more than half of its opening cost with tenant improvement allowances. An SBA borrower without that support carries the whole stack, and on a ground-up build the stack is too heavy for the revenue a suburban independent can earn.

The project is feasible as restructured, subject to the conditions at the end of this page. The restructure keeps the program, the 12 lanes, the mini-golf, the arcade, the bar and the kitchen, and changes the real estate: the borrower buys a vacant 25,000 SF former junior-box retail building on 3.0 acres for $1,500,000 and converts it at $100 per SF, using the slab, roof, parking, utilities and site that the previous retailer paid for. The 504 project falls to $7,019,488 and total cost to $7,504,488 including a $150,000 reserve; debt falls to $5,615,591 and debt service to $503,186. The venue covers 1.13x in year 1, 1.40x in year 2 and 1.68x in year 3, holds 1.15x down to revenue 11.2 percent below plan and 1.00x down to 14.4 percent below. The conversion is also the market's answer to the format's cost problem: Chicken N Pickle called off its Fishers project and moved to growth by acquisition because of tariffs and construction cost, and a vacant box on an arterial with 200 parking spaces is the asset the format needs at a price the format can pay.

The determination carries a warning the sensitivity table makes plain. A 20 percent revenue miss takes the restructured venue to 0.73x, and a venue's revenue is less predictable than a restaurant's because it is bought one party and one league at a time. The format's public record is softening: Topgolf's same-venue sales fell 8.6 percent in FY2024 and were guided down mid-single digits for 2025, and Lucky Strike's same-store revenue fell 3.7 percent in FY2025 and 4.1 percent in its fourth quarter. The conditions are written around the revenue evidence.

A 7(a) loan was considered and rejected: the $5,615,591 of debt exceeds the $5 million 7(a) maximum and the 504 structure prices the real estate at a fixed rate. USDA Business and Industry does not apply inside the Indianapolis urbanized area.

Fishers is a city of about 100,000 residents in Hamilton County, the fastest-growing county in Indiana, on the northeast side of the Indianapolis metro. The model case fixes the city and the building type, not the address: a vacant 25,000 SF former junior-box retail building on a 3.0-acre site on a suburban commercial corridor, with the existing slab, roof, parking for about 200 cars and utility services. The building is the point of the restructure and its condition is a condition: the conversion budget assumes a sound roof and slab, a structure that accepts the lane beds and pits for 12 lanes, and electrical service that a kitchen, a bar and an arcade can share.

Entitlement is a change of use and a building permit under the Fishers Unified Development Ordinance, with a parking count that a 25,000 SF entertainment venue with a bar will test against the ordinance's ratios and a sound and hours review for the outdoor patio; the zoning verification letter and the parking determination are conditions. Property tax is Indiana's market-value assessment with the constitutional cap of 3 percent of gross assessed value for commercial property; the Fishers taxing district rate is modeled at about $2.20 per $100 of assessed value, $91,300 in year 1 on the $4,150,000 of building and conversion as restructured against $198,550 on the proposed build, pending the Department of Local Government Finance's certified rate. Indiana's sales tax is 7 percent and Hamilton County levies a food and beverage tax that passes through. The three-way alcohol permit is quota-limited by population under the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission, and availability in Hamilton County or the purchase of a permit is a condition that sits ahead of the loan. Indiana's minimum wage is the federal $7.25 with a $2.13 tipped cash wage, and the venue's hourly crew is modeled at $13.50 on average.

The format's economics. Three public records bracket the venue. Topgolf, the format's largest brand, reported venue-level EBITDA margins of about 34 percent for FY2024 on $337 million of segment EBITDA, same-venue sales down 8.6 percent for the year, a return target of 18 to 22 percent on gross investment and 50 to 60 percent cash-on-cash at year 5 set in 2023, and a sale of 60 percent of the business to Leonard Green at a $1.1 billion valuation effective January 1, 2026, far below its 2020 merger value; its venues cost $15 million to $36 million and its landlords funded about 75 percent of that. Lucky Strike, formerly Bowlero, reported $1,201.3 million of FY2025 revenue across 365 locations, about $3.2 million per location on a mix that includes water parks and family entertainment centers, adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of 32 to 34 percent at the corporate level, and same-store revenue down 3.7 percent for the year and 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter, with growth by acquisition. Puttshack reported an $11 million to $12 million AUV at a 25 percent store-level margin on about 25,000 SF, with more than half of its opening cost covered by tenant improvement allowances, and dropped its Reston site when the landlord leased the space to an office tenant. Dave and Buster's cut its year-one cash-on-cash target to at least 30 percent. Chicken N Pickle called off its Fishers project and pivoted to acquisitions because of tariffs and construction costs.

What the record says. The branded venues earn 25 to 34 percent at the venue level on revenue an independent cannot match, and they do it on real estate someone else paid for. The independent in this case is modeled at $3.4 million of revenue in year-1 dollars, $136 per SF and $3.6 million at stabilization, between the Lucky Strike average and the bottom of the branded range, at a 23.5 percent stabilized margin below Puttshack's 25 percent, and it buys its building at a retailer's exit price rather than building it. The study for a fixed address would report the drive-time population and household income within 15 and 25 minutes, the corporate and league demand that fills weekday afternoons, the competing bowling centers, entertainment venues and branded concepts in the metro with their lane counts and price points, and the pipeline, which in the Indianapolis market includes the branded operators' own plans. For the model case these are conditions, and the revenue is built by stream rather than by brand.

The ramp is 85 percent of stabilized revenue in year 1, 95 percent in year 2 and stabilized from year 3, a model assumption on a format that opens with a marketing push and builds league and corporate business over its first two seasons; prices and costs escalate 3 percent a year.

No institutional 2026 cost guide for an entertainment venue was located; the construction and conversion lines are model assumptions and the executed contracts and vendor quotes are conditions. The arcade can be placed by a games operator on a revenue share, which removes $300,000 from the project and a share of the games stream from the revenue; the study tests both and the owned case is carried.

The two structures earn the same revenue from the same program; the difference between them in year 3 is $113,782 of property tax and $412,042 of debt service, and the second is the one that decides the case. The proposed build never covers in ten years; its cumulative shortfall is $1,570,973.

On the stabilized year-3 statement with all three streams scaled and the fixed lines held, the restructured venue covers debt service at $2,911,966 of revenue in year-1 dollars (14.4 percent below plan), reaches 1.15x at $3,018,999 (11.2 percent below) and 1.25x at $3,090,354 (9.1 percent below). As proposed, break-even is $3,657,618, 1.15x needs $3,852,296 and 1.25x needs $3,982,081, 7.6 to 17.1 percent above the plan. The restructured cushion is wider than any restaurant case in this cluster, and it needs to be, because a venue's revenue carries the format's demand risk.

All rows start from the restructured base unless labeled otherwise.

Revenue is the binding variable and the operating lines are secondary: the restructured venue absorbs a 10 percent miss, a three-point food move, a 10 percent labor move, a rate move, a shorter amortization and a lower contribution tier, each at or above the floor, and it does not absorb a 20 percent miss. The last row is the one a sponsor will cite, and it is the branded venues' economics: at $4.5 million the ground-up build covers, and $4.5 million on 25,000 SF is a Puttshack-class number that an unbranded first venue has no record of earning.

No independent eatertainment venue sale with a published cap rate exists in the public record, and the appraisal on a converted box is a two-part opinion: the real estate on its alternative use, which is a 25,000 SF retail box on 3.0 acres worth about what the borrower paid for it plus the share of the conversion a retail tenant would value, and the going concern on the venue's cash flow. The 504 lender's collateral is the first; the bowling installations, mini-golf, arcade and kitchen are special-purpose equipment with resale values far below cost, and the lane beds and pits have no value to a retail successor. At a 9 percent capitalization of stabilized EBITDA, a rate a buyer of a single-venue entertainment business might apply, the going-concern indication is about $9.4 million, 134 percent of the 504 project; at the real estate's alternative-use value of perhaps $2.5 million to $3.0 million the first lien of $3,509,744 is thinly covered and the debenture is not. The study reports both so the CDC and the bank underwrite the equity, the reserve and the cash flow rather than the collateral.

Prepared by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA, Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Model case aligned with SBA SOP 50 10 8.1, under USPAP discipline. MMCG Invest, LLC, 27 Maiden Lane, Suite 625, San Francisco, CA 94108.