Trampoline Park Cost Per Square Foot: Five Filings Compared

In November 2024, a company called Slink Holding filed a renovation declaration with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR): $400,000 to convert a former furniture store at 1300 Custer Road, Plano, into Funcity Trampoline Park. The floor area on the filing was 42,000 sq ft (3,902 m²).

In April 2026, a few miles from that address, another operator filed a similar declaration: $1,400,000 to renovate 24,712 sq ft (2,296 m²) for Big Air Trampoline Park, also in Plano.

Divide each declared cost by its floor area and the gap is hard to ignore: $9.52 per square foot for the larger park, $56.65 per square foot for the smaller one. Same state, same filing system, same industry. Close to a six-fold difference in trampoline park cost per square foot.

The difference is not that one operator was careless and the other was not. The filings measure different things, and most people who quote them measure the wrong one.

This article works through five trampoline park fit-out filings registered in Texas between November 2024 and August 2026. All five are public records, verifiable on the TDLR website. It shows where each number comes from, what each declaration includes, what the filings cannot tell you, and how to turn them into a budget check you can defend.

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1. Five Filings, One State, a Six-Fold Spread

Texas requires most commercial construction projects to register under its Architectural Barriers program before work proceeds. Each registration creates a public record that lists the project name, an estimated cost declared by the applicant, the floor area covered, the type of work, and a short scope-of-work description. Trampoline park conversions show up in this database regularly, because a park is almost always a renovation of an existing retail or mercantile box.

Five such registrations, all for trampoline park interior fit-outs, form the dataset for this article. Here is the raw data exactly as filed:

Four of the five sit in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, within roughly an hour of each other, so regional labor and material markets are comparable. All five are renovations or alterations of existing commercial buildings, not ground-up construction. That consistency is what makes the spread in the next section worth taking seriously.

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2. Cost Per Square Foot: How the Numbers Are Calculated

The derivation is a single division, applied identically to every row:

Declared cost per square foot = estimated cost ÷ filed square footage
Declared cost per square meter = estimated cost ÷ (square footage × 0.092903)

Worked example, Funcity: $400,000 ÷ 42,000 sq ft = $9.52 per sq ft. In metric terms, 42,000 sq ft × 0.092903 = 3,902 m², and $400,000 ÷ 3,902 m² = $102.51 per m². Every other row uses the same two steps, with no adjustments, no exclusions, and no rounding beyond two decimals.

Three reference points fall out of this table. The median of the five is $38.08 per sq ft (Altitude, Arlington). The highest is $56.65 and the lowest is $9.52, a ratio of 5.95. And the four full-scope renovations, excluding Funcity, cluster between $27.78 and $56.65, a far narrower band than the raw five.

Those three numbers answer different questions, and mixing them up is the first way investors get misled. Before using any of them, you need to know why one filing came in at a sixth of another.

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3. Why the Same Filing Type Produces Different Numbers

A six-fold spread inside one filing system has three visible drivers in the scope texts. None of them is brand strength or negotiating skill.

3.1 The scope text defines what was bought

What it is The cheapest filing, Funcity, describes its work as “electrical, plumbing, HVAC and cosmetic work” in a former furniture store. The most expensive filings, Big Air and Grapevine Sky Zone, describe general interior renovations without narrowing the scope.

What it decides A filing that lists only mechanical, electrical and finishing work covers a much thinner slice of the project than one that says “interior fit-out” without qualification. Reading the scope text is not optional; it is the difference between comparing two prices and comparing a price with a down payment.

What to verify Before you quote any filing number, read its scope line on the original record and ask: does this cover demolition, party rooms, a kitchen, restrooms, or just services and finishes? The TDLR record for Sky Zone Waco, for example, explicitly includes a cafe and kitchen area plus party rooms, which is a materially larger construction job than a services-only refresh.

3.2 The building you start with sets the bill

Funcity took over a furniture retail store: a big, open floor plate built for public access, with HVAC sized for shoppers. Sky Zone Waco took over a former retail box as well, according to local reporting on the site’s history. Altitude, by contrast, registered a scope that begins with “interior demolition of previous tenant’s improvements,” which means paying twice: once to remove, once to build. The same square footage costs a landlord’s price or a builder’s price depending on what the last tenant left behind.

3.3 The filing date matters, but not that much

The filings span 22 months, from November 2024 to August 2026. Construction input costs moved over that period, so part of the spread reflects timing. But timing cannot carry a six-fold difference on its own, and the data does not show later filings uniformly higher: the April 2026 Big Air filing ($56.65) and the August 2026 Grapevine filing ($51.87) bracket the February 2026 Altitude filing ($38.08) from both sides. Date is a correction factor, not an explanation.

With five filings, these three drivers interact and cannot be cleanly separated. That limitation is structural, and the next section deals with it directly.

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4. What the Filing Cost Does Not Cover

Here is the finding that matters most for your budget: none of the five scope texts mentions the attraction package. There is no line for trampoline beds, springs, foam cubes, padding, ninja rigging, climbing structures or soft play modules. Those components are procured from equipment manufacturers under separate contracts, and in these filings there is no sign of them inside the declared construction cost.

This is not a guess about accounting practice; it is a direct reading of what each filer chose to declare. Two further records make the boundary explicit:

• In Rosenberg, a developer filed $1,000,000 for a 37,536 sq ft (3,487 m²) building shell whose anticipated main tenant is Urban Air, with the note that the tenant’s own fit-out would be “submitted for TI scope and occupancy under separate cover.” That works out to $26.64 per sq ft for a shell with no park inside it, a number that would sit mid-table in the comparison above while measuring something entirely different.
• In the Funcity filing, the declared work stops at services and cosmetics. Whatever the trampolines and foam pits cost, the record does not say.

The practical consequence: a filing’s trampoline park cost per square foot is a construction and fit-out benchmark only. Your equipment package is a separate budget line with its own quote, its own lead time and its own quality checks. If you benchmark your total project against a filing figure, you will under-count, because the single largest procurement after the building itself is not in the number. For how the equipment line is actually built up, from steel structure to bed fabric to installation, see what goes into equipment quality and materials, and for how a full park floor is allocated across zones before any of it is priced, see how one 22,000 sq ft park split its floor across eight attraction types.

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5. What the Data Does and Does Not Show

Every number in this article is public and reproducible. Its boundaries are just as important as its values.

5.1 What the data shows

• Real declared fit-out costs for trampoline park conversions in one US state, filed between November 2024 and August 2026, ranging from $9.52 to $56.65 per sq ft ($102.51 to $609.76 per m²) depending on scope.
• That full-scope interior renovations of 24,000 to 45,000 sq ft boxes declared $1.2M to $1.6M in this window, while a thinner services-and-cosmetics scope declared $400,000 for a larger space.
• That fit-out and attraction equipment are declared separately: filings describe construction scopes, and the equipment package does not appear in any of the five scope texts.

5.2 What the data does not show

• Final invoices. The cost on a filing is an estimate declared at registration by the applicant. Actual spend is not a public record, and the estimate may move during construction.
• A national benchmark. Five projects in one state is a case series, not a market index. Texas labor rates, code requirements and building stock are specific, and the median of this sample is not the median of the industry.
• Anything about revenue. Parks that declared higher costs per square foot did not necessarily build better parks or earn more per visitor. These records contain no attendance, ticket or margin data at all, and no conclusion about performance can be drawn from them. Higher declared cost correlates with broader scope, and nothing else in this dataset.
• Where the construction/equipment line was drawn. Two filers can legally draw the boundary between “construction” and “equipment” differently. The scope texts narrow this uncertainty but do not eliminate it.

Stated plainly: this dataset answers “what did comparable Texas fit-outs declare, and what did that declaration include?” It does not answer “what will my park cost?” That second question needs your building, your scope and your equipment quote, which is the subject of Section 7.

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6. A Cross-Market Warning: RM8 Million in Penang

The same mistake gets made across borders, with bigger consequences. In October 2026, the operator Xventure announced an RM8 million development for its first Malaysian park: 1,800 m² (about 19,375 sq ft) at The Waterfront Shoppes in Penang, with 11 adventure zones. Divide one by the other and you get RM4,444 per m², or at an assumed rate of RM4.5 to the US dollar, roughly US$988 per m², about 1.6 times Big Air’s $610 per m² in Plano.

That 1.6-times comparison is invalid before the math even starts, because the two numbers are different species:

• The Texas figures are declared construction costs for a defined physical scope, filed with a regulator for a defined regulatory purpose.
• The Penang figure is an announced total investment in a press release. Announcements of this kind conventionally cover more than construction, typically including the attraction package, technology systems, pre-opening costs and other project expenses, though the operator has not published a breakdown.

Comparing them is like comparing a contractor’s quote with a company’s annual report. The fix costs nothing: before dividing any investment figure by any floor area, ask which scope the numerator covers and who declared it. A per-square-foot number is only as honest as its numerator. The same discipline applies to the denominator, by the way: a filing that covers 30,845 sq ft of tenant space is not comparable to one that covers 37,536 sq ft of shell.

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7. How to Use These Filings in Your Own Budget

The filings are most useful as a sanity check on a budget you build from your own project, not as a source of the budget itself. The working method is to split your money into two independent budgets and reconcile each against its own comparable:

Budget A (fit-out) ≈ filed $/sq ft × your area
  adjust for: scope match, previous use of the building, filing date

Budget B (equipment) = manufacturer quote per zone mix
  based on layout and attraction list, never on $/sq ft rules

Total project ≈ A + B + soft costs + pre-opening + working capital

Three checks keep Budget A honest:

• Scope match. Compare your intended works to the filing’s scope text line by line. If your project includes demolition of a previous tenant’s improvements, the Altitude filing ($38.08 per sq ft) is a closer comparable than Funcity ($9.52), even if your building is the same size.
• Building condition. A second-generation restaurant space, a former grocery and an empty shell carry very different fit-out bills for the same park on the same street. The Rosenberg shell filing exists precisely to show that one project can generate two declarations with different scopes.
• Date correction. A November 2024 declaration is 22 months older than an August 2026 one. Apply a conservative allowance for construction cost movement over that interval rather than assuming the two are directly comparable.

Budget B has no equivalent public record anywhere, which is why it deserves a separate procurement process: layout first, zone mix second, quote third, and quality verification fourth. If you are starting from zero, the design-to-delivery process page walks through that sequence, and our four-part breakdown of total trampoline park investment cost shows where A and B sit inside the full capital stack.

One negotiation note follows directly from the data: because filings show fit-out as the large, uncertain line, the tenant improvement allowance you negotiate with the landlord moves more money than any equipment discount will. A few dollars per square foot of TI on a 30,000 sq ft box is a six-figure swing.

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8. Decision Rules, Not Predictions

Nothing in this article predicts where fit-out costs go next. These filings are historical records, and the rules below work regardless of which direction costs move. This is the decision table:

If one sentence survives this article, make it this: the trampoline park cost per square foot that a filing shows is the cost of the work that filing declared, nothing more. Read the scope before you quote the number, and keep your equipment budget in its own column.

When you have your building shortlisted and your zone mix sketched, send us the floor area and the attraction list and we will return a 3D layout and an equipment quote within 48 hours, so Budget A and Budget B each get a number you can actually defend.

Get a free design and quote →

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FAQ

How much does trampoline park fit-out cost per square foot?

Five Texas filings from November 2024 to August 2026 declare $9.52 to $56.65 per sq ft ($102.51 to $609.76 per m²) for trampoline park renovations. The spread is driven mainly by scope: a services-and-cosmetics conversion filed $9.52, while full interior fit-outs filed $27.78 to $56.65. The figures are construction declarations and do not include the attraction equipment package.

Does a TDLR filing include the trampoline park equipment?

Not in any of the five filings reviewed here. The scope texts describe electrical, plumbing, HVAC, demolition, partition and finishing work. Trampoline beds, springs, foam, padding, ninja rigging and soft play are procured from equipment manufacturers under separate contracts and do not appear in the declared construction cost. Always read the scope line before quoting a filing figure.

Why do two trampoline park filings in the same city differ by six times per square foot?

Because they declare different work. The $400,000 Funcity filing in Plano covered electrical, plumbing, HVAC and cosmetic work in a former furniture store. The $1,400,000 Big Air filing a few miles away covered a general interior renovation of a smaller space. Scope, previous building condition and filing date all shift the number, in that order of importance.

What is the TDLR TABS record and why is it public?

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation requires most commercial construction to register under its Architectural Barriers program, which exists to enforce accessibility standards. Each registration lists the project name, an applicant-declared estimated cost, floor area, work type and a scope summary. Because it is a regulatory record, it is publicly searchable, which makes it one of the few verifiable cost data sources for this industry.

Can I budget my whole project from a per-square-foot filing figure?

No. The filing covers fit-out only, and the equipment package, soft costs, pre-opening and working capital sit outside it. Build two budgets instead: a fit-out budget benchmarked against scope-matched filings, and an equipment budget quoted per zone mix from manufacturers. Only the sum of both, plus the remaining lines, resembles a real project budget.

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Sources

1. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Funcity Trampoline Park”, TABS2025005605, filed November 14, 2024 — tdlr.texas.gov
2. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Skyzone Waco”, TABS2025020229, filed June 2, 2025 — tdlr.texas.gov
3. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Shell Construction for Future Urban Air”, TABS2025012702, filed February 25, 2025 — tdlr.texas.gov
4. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Altitude Trampoline Park”, TABS2026013038, filed February 19, 2026 — tdlr.texas.gov
5. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Big Air Trampoline Park – Plano, TX”, TABS2026017277, filed April 9, 2026 — tdlr.texas.gov
6. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, “Grapevine TX Sky Zone Trampoline Park”, TABS2026029129, filed August 28, 2026 — tdlr.texas.gov
7. Business News Malaysia, “Xventure’s RM8 Million Adventure Park Lands in Penang on 29 October”, October 15, 2026 — businessnews.com.my
8. SprawlTag, “What’s Replacing This Burlington Store in Waco, Texas? Plans Are Now Confirmed”, June 2025 — sprawltag.com