The Launching Pad is closing its doors, making it the second business in a week to announce it was leaving the Village.
Alan Maugherman, The Launching Pad founder, said the music venue was closing Nov. 1 after a unanimous decision by the Full Circle Arts Co-op, the group that runs the business.
He said the decision was made after months of discussions.
Maugherman said the business had problems getting insurance coverage and rent was difficult to pay on a monthly basis. Also, people vandalized the venue and stole from it, he said, Finally, the venue had trouble paying its employees to man the shows, Maugherman said.
"We have had a steady drop in volunteers, and this led to the same two people putting in 15 to 35 hours every week for free to keep the place running," he said.
Zita Kramer, property manager of the Village businesses, said she had not heard The Launching Pad was closing and declined to comment further until she could find out more details.
Derick Young, a Ball State University junior human resource and business administration major, said he thought it was sad The Launching Pad was closing because it brought bands to the area.
"I feel like the politics of who gets to rent where sucks," Young said. "The Blue Bottle used to be where T.I.S. is but [because of rent] they had to move. A lot of businesses that should do well here don't because of how rent is down here."
Young said he had been to the music venue once and, although the location was small, he enjoyed listening to bands.
He said it was a shame The Launching Pad was another business leaving the Village.
Mary Ogle, operating manager of the Full Circle Arts Co-op and director of The Launching Pad, said the board should have closed it months ago because of its lack of insurance. She said after it was evident The Launching Pad could not get insurance, the board decided it was time to close.
Ogle said she was not surprised another business was leaving the Village.
"There'd be a constant rotation of businesses in that plaza and across the street," Ogle said. "I'm not sure if all have the same reasoning of high rent and they can't pull it off, but that seems to be a lot of it because it's hard to a promote business and keep everything going and pay really, really high rent. Besides from mt cup, White Rabbit and Greek's, [businesses] have been swapped out at least once in the past decade."
She said the board hoped to reopen The Launching Pad in the future, although an exact time and location was not yet known. Full Circle Arts Co-op was looking at the second story of Doc's Music Hall downtown by changing the upstairs and providing its own entrance to make it an all-ages venue by next year, she said.
"At this point it's looking like downtown might be a better option for cost reasons," she said. "We'd like to find a way to have something in the Village, but we aren't sure."
She said if students wanted to keep businesses in the Village they needed to go to them and encourage other people to go to them.
"It's really easy to take local businesses for granted, and when services are provided at a local level, you have to respect them and help maintain them or they won't last long," Ogle said. "When you have a chance to go to BoRics or a non-local place, students need to sacrifice dollars [that might be more expensive] and support local businesses. We're not like Wal-Mart where if the Muncie Wal-Mart doesn't get [business], the other ones around world will make up for it. There's one BoRics and one Launching Pad, and if we don't get the business we'll die."
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