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Recreational in industrial zone?

We have had a gymnastics facility in one of our industrial parks for many years with no issues. Parking is a little tight when they have events there, but those typically don't interfere with other park users, so we have had no complaints. We also have an indoor "sportsplex" owned and operated by the county in a different industrial park, also with virtually no issues.
 
As long as the user isn't offended by industrial uses nearby I never had a problem. Like Gedunker said, parking could be a problem and you might get some future complaints of not having enough signage or visibility, but they should understand location and cost and all that play a big part in what you get.
 
There is a city across the state line who pre-graded an industrial park and put soccer fields on the building ready pads or temporary uses until the site sold for an industry. There were no conflicts because the fields were used during the evening for practices (with enough light) & games were on weekends which didn't interfere with industrial traffic during the long transition.

They also had a park where employees could go for a walk or eat lunch. Very well done.

This allowed them to justify building a soccer complex just down the street.
 
luckless pedestrian said:
It's a great reuse of industrial buildings that have been empty imho
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This. It's a way to revitalize an area if there is empty industrial.

There is an industrial area a mile or two north of my house. Still a lot of active industry, but also a couple of gyms/fitness centers and a youth sports complex (basically an off-brand YMCA). It actually works pretty well with the industrial use because while there's a lot of on-street parking, it's usually during off-peak times for the industrial buildings.
 
If you have empty industrial areas it can make sense, like crossfit and other uses. But in our case we have a lack of light industrial buildings and when you have HVAC repair next to Karate, next to a shipping/receiving building it all gets too jumbled up. The worst part is erodes your commercial zones. I bet you have more than one vacant strip center in town, and if you have vacant commercial buildings but you let these commercial uses in your industrial area you are not doing any favors for your commercial land lords, you only let the dance studios save a few dollars a month on rent.
 
Tide said:
If you have empty industrial areas it can make sense, like crossfit and other uses. But in our case we have a lack of light industrial buildings and when you have HVAC repair next to Karate, next to a shipping/receiving building it all gets too jumbled up. The worst part is erodes your commercial zones. I bet you have more than one vacant strip center in town, and if you have vacant commercial buildings but you let these commercial uses in your industrial area you are not doing any favors for your commercial land lords, you only let the dance studios save a few dollars a month on rent.
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Well, yeah, that's different - I think if you have a healthy industrial zone that has interested developers/tenants then you shouldn't add recreation.

I think recreation works in these zones that aren't doing well and have high vacancy rates.
 
Thanks for everyone's thoughts. We are in a relatively fortunate position in that we don't have a large amount of vacancies in either commercial or industrial areas, however there are some vacancies in both. What we have is a small warehouse that was built spec and the owner hasn't been able to fill it, combined with someone who wants to start a batting cage business who, yes, would like to save on rent but has also had a hard time finding a commercial property with ceiling heights high enough to allow for their activity. I'm hard pressed to point to a commercial property in town that is able to accommodate the use without significant modifications to the building. But I also asked the question because this is something that comes up occasionally and I was curious what others thought. Thanks again!
 
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