Business makes jumping, exercising fun

With more than 100 trampolines and a dodgeball court, Urban Air Trampoline Park has put a new spin to backyard trampoline and schoolyard dodgeball. Children and adults can enjoy bouncing and exercising at the indoor sports and entertainment facility that emphasizes safety.

"As kids, we would always try to push the trampoline to the pool and try to jump into the pool, which was dangerous," co-founder Michael Browning Jr. said. "But now you can come here and you can jump into a Foam Pit."

The Foam Pit is comprised of six trampoline squares, where visitors can jump into cushions of foam. Or they can fly down a 56-foot trampoline called The Runway or bounce off the walls at The Apex, which connects 70 trampoline squares. An area is reserved for children under 7 at The Bowl, which connects 26 trampoline squares from the floor to the wall.

Urban Air Trampoline Park features more than 10,000 square feet of jumpable surface for people of all ages seeking a safe, clean environment to be entertained. It opened in October 2011, after the Browning family realized a family-friendly trampoline park was missing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Browning Jr. visited a trade show in San Francisco and stumbled upon a small trampoline park there.

Excited, he immediately called his father Mike Browning, owner of Browning Custom Homes, asking if he could build a trampoline park. At first Browning could not visualize his son's idea, but he was persuaded after visiting trampoline parks in San Francisco with his wife, Sharla, and daughter-in-law, Melissa.

Browning's company worked with an architect to custom design the 25,000-square-foot indoor sports facility. More than 100,000 people have played there since it opened. They also host dodgeball tournaments and offer fitness classes on the trampolines.

Visitors celebrate a variety of events there, and birthday parties are sold out 60 days in advance.

Those wanting to spend more time at the park can book "lock-ins" to rent the facility for five hours with security and staff present. Safety is important at the park, where only one person is allowed per trampoline square. Signs with rules are posted at the complex, and court monitors blow whistles when rules are broken. The unwritten rule is to have fun.

"Everybody remembers loving their trampoline in their backyard," Browning Jr. said, "but to be able to come to a place where there are hundreds of trampolines, I think it brings out the kid in everyone."

Urban Air Trampoline Park, 325 Commerce St., Ste. 110, Southlake, 817-203-8686, www.urbanairtrampolinepark.com