Americans today are more than ready to enjoy their newfound freedom from the previous years’ lockdown stresses and are yearning to lose themselves in another world. But with inflation/recession concerns at the forefront, many want to have these experiences without spending a lot of money, which means they may avoid traveling and purchasing tickets for costly amusement parks in far-flung cities. The solution appears to be the art immersion experience.
Companies create these experiential artistic exhibits, and then charge customers an admission price in the $24 to $60 range to walk through the displays, which generally take about an hour to complete. The various exhibits change every six months or so, allowing customers to have new opportunities to see fresh material. The demographics are wide-ranging, as these immersive exhibits attract all ages from young children to millennials to senior citizens. The core audience, however, is the 20- to 35-year-old crowd, including those with young families. Expect many more of these interactive art concepts to take up retail spaces, especially as the technology for these immersive museums continues to excel and become more widely recognized.
These art immersion tenants have been leasing up limited-run, pop-up units in underutilized big-box spaces throughout the country, especially empty warehouses and vacant art museum sites. Recently, many of these art immersion experiences are taking up permanent spots, with long-term leases, in shopping centers, including street-front sites and strip malls. These experiences utilize visual stimulation presentations through methods such as digital images and holographic displays projected onto walls and ceilings for a 3D sensation, in addition to incorporating unique LED lighting and physical sculptural artistic elements in many cases. Art immersion experiential brands jumping on this trend include Museum of Illusions, Illuminarium, Meow Wolf, Otherworld and Seismique.
The Museum of Illusions franchise has lofty goals of opening up to 10 of its “edu-tainment” immersive experience units per year over the next five years. Immediate areas eyed for growth are concentrated in urban cities in the Southeast, Midwest and West Coast. Upcoming locations that will open by the end of this year/early next year will be in Austin, Denver, Scottsdale, Ariz., Washington, D.C., Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta and Boston.
Ideal square footage should be in the 7,000- to 10,000-s.f. range, but the brand will consider a bit smaller or larger space. Standalone buildings are preferred, but Museum of Illusions is also interested in mixed-use buildings, as well as indoor malls. Its upcoming Washington, D.C., location will occupy a 6,800-s.f. unit, a portion of a former Mango Tree Thai restaurant, with the remainder of the space to be occupied by menswear brand Brioni. Ideal locations should have a large concentration of millennials, 20-somethings and young families. A tourist-destination element, as well as a college in the vicinity, is also a plus. Preferred co-tenants include other entertainment-themed brands and popular eateries, such as Corner Bakery Cafe. Museum of Illusions features different rooms that provide optical illusion and brain-teasing exhibits that are based on math, science and art.
Illuminarium is in the process of expanding its 360-degree high-definition camera-projected immersive scenery exhibit experiences into new venues throughout the U.S. and globally. Domestic markets eyed for growth include Austin, Los Angeles and New York City. In 2023, a new Illuminarium will occupy 32,000 s.f. of space on Chicago’s Navy Pier, taking over a portion of the Crystal Gardens reception venue. The pier destination features other tourist-type co-tenants, such as Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, IT’SUGAR and Kilwins.
By late 2022, Illuminarium also expects to open a 33,000-s.f. unit in a converted warehouse space within Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, an arts district haven.
Currently, Illuminarium has two units in the U.S.: a 30,000-s.f. standalone building site within the AREA15 campus in Las Vegas that opened in April, as well as its 26,000-s.f. debut site that opened in July 2021 in the Common Grounds mixed-use development in Atlanta, taking over a revamped warehouse space that had once been part of the Western Electric Company’s facilities. Co-tenants in the Atlanta site include New Realm Brewing Company, TWO Urban Licks, a local live blues music/restaurant, Estrella Rooftop, a local Mexican cantina restaurant, and Bully Boy, a local upscale Asian seafood restaurant/bar. The Illuminarium experience utilizes features such as film projected images, scents, vibrations and sounds and/or music to recreate settings such as a wild safari, a space visit, a winter-themed journey, an Alice in Wonderland-themed scenario, as well as a Georgia O’Keefe artwork immersion. The brand is also testing out other features, such as incorporating an after-hours dining/cocktail bar element, and offering morning activities, such as morning yoga/meditation classes.
The Meow Wolf brand of immersive art space exhibits announced it will open two upcoming sites in Texas over the next two years in retail spaces. By 2024, Meow Wolf expects to open a 32,242-s.f. space in the upcoming East River mixed-use development project in the Fifth Ward area in Houston. The unit will be in a redeveloped 115,000-s.f. warehouse, originally built in 1917, which will also house other restaurants and retailers. Other tenants signed on to open units in the project include URBN Dental, Broham Fine Soul Food & Groceries and Lick Honest Ice Creams. Meow Wolf will also open a unit next year in a 40,340-s.f. former Bed, Bath & Beyond at the Simon Property Group-owned Grapevine Mills indoor mall in Grapevine, Texas. It will share space in the mall with many other entertainment-oriented tenants such as Legoland Discovery Center, Sea Life Grapevine, Rainforest Cafe, AMC Theatres anda Round1 Bowling & Amusement.
Underutilized spaces have been a hallmark of Meow Wolf, which opened its first unit in 2016 at a former 20,000-s.f. Silva Lanes bowling alley location in Santa Fe, N.M. Last year, Meow Wolf opened two more locations: in September it completed a 90,000-s.f., five-story building in Denver, which is wedged in an offramp between two highways. The brand also opened a 52,000-s.f. unit within the aforementioned AREA15 large venue art/experiential-esque mall in Las Vegas in February of 2021.
Meow Wolf utilizes hundreds of local artists for its art installation spaces, including sculptors and painters, and each exhibit site has its own unique displays that are special to that particular city. Its various themed exhibits can include elements such as secret passages, music, interactive lighting, and wacky, colorful sculptures with robotic touches. In 2019, the brand even partnered with Elitch Gardens, a water park/amusement park in Denver, to add its creative elements for a ride, called Kaleidoscape. Meow Wolf also experiments with new features, such as its Denver site that provides a coffee shop and a concert space in addition to its exhibit space. Look for Meow Wolf to continue to seek unique new spaces to provide its art immersion concept to the masses.
Otherworld (not to be confused with OTHERWORLD, a London-based VR gaming retail concept) is a multisensory art exhibit experience whose original site opened in Columbus, Ohio, in 2019. The brand announced that it is not only expanding the size of its Columbus unit but will also open a second location in a still undisclosed Philadelphia site, expected to be completed by late 2022/early 2023. Otherworld hinted at continued new units opening, rumored to also be in the Midwest/Northeast, with Cincinnati, Cleveland and Indianapolis potentially being at the forefront.
The Columbus location, situated about 10 miles east of the city center, is noteworthy, as Otherworld took over space in a mostly abandoned strip mall, occupying a former 32,000-s.f. Sports Authority. In early 2022, Otherworld enlarged the location, leasing the 26,000-s.f. space next to it, a former PetSmart. This is in order to add more exhibit spaces, as well as a permanent music venue element for live shows and concerts. Otherworld features a 47-room walk-through art installation experience that incorporates projectors, holograms, LED lights and motion tracking cameras to provide such interactive amusements as secret passageways, puzzles and “dreamscape” rooms with alien-like abstract geometric lights and bioluminescent creatures and structures.
Although it only has one location to date, the Seismique immersive art museum, in Houston, is a tenant worth watching. The brand signed a 10-year lease for the 40,000-s.f. former Bed, Bath and Beyond end cap space in a strip mall, with co-tenants such as Best Buy, Ross Dress for Less and Five Below. Seismique features 40 different galleries that exhibit about 24 different artists, a quarter of whom are local Texans, who all excel in interactive augmented reality displays. The technology utilizes holograms, motion tracking, LED lightbulbs and projection mapping.
There is buzz that more Seismique locations will open throughout the country, especially because the founder of the concept is also the COO of the country’s largest escape room company, called Escape The Room. If there were to be future locations, they are rumored to be where these escape rooms are based, which are in major metros throughout the U.S., including Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Scottsdale, New York City, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. Seismique describes itself as an “intergalactic playground,” and its rooms feature colors, sounds, lights and tactile displays that offer up different alien-esque planetary settings.
