“My husband was getting his degree in business during his career in military service. We have three children, and it was a lot when one half of the team is traveling all the time. He started looking for a way to grow entrepreneurially and away from the military, while staying home and investing in the community where we lived and where we grew up as well.
He was the best man in his best friend's wedding down in Texas a few years ago. The day before the wedding, all the guys all went ax throwing and he just thought it was just so much fun. That planted the seed of ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have something like that in Lapeer?’ Lapeer needed more activities and ‘things to do’, and at the same time, he was growing his hobby of arcade repair and restoration and pinball collecting. So, we thought about combining axe throwing and an arcade, and that’s how Axecadia began.
We opened April of 2023, so just over a year ago and it was a lot of work. We got the keys to the building, and if we wanted it to be an axe-throwing venue and arcade, we would have to take everything down to the studs and start fresh…so we did. Luckily, Chris is very handy and was able to do the majority of that himself and with the help of some wonderful people in the community. But at the end of the day, it was still a lot of work. We had a lot of positive buzz beforehand about it so we were really grateful for that. A lot of the community members, the DDA and more were supportive and excited about this opening up and we felt very supported throughout.
There's a lot of things I could say about why I love this place, but a big one is that we are a place where people come to have fun. We're a place where people can get excited and celebrate. Businesses do their Christmas parties and staff appreciation days here, and people come to celebrate their birthdays. We've had a wedding rehearsal dinner and class reunions. We're in the business of helping people make positive memories together, and it's very special to me that people come here to connect with each other. People are hungry for making positive connections and being around people, and it’s been fun seeing people interact and multiple generations come together.
There's a grandmother who's called me a couple of times this week saying, ‘You're open Thursday at 4:00, right? My grandsons are coming over for ‘Camp Grandma’. We visited last summer and we're going to come again. My grandsons are so excited about it.
Before opening Axecadia, we were encouraged by the downtown Lapeer atmosphere and how it's grown over the past seven to 10 years. We had moved out of state to North Carolina, but we still had a lot of family and friends up here, so we’d come back and visit. We would drive through downtown and initially it looked like a bit of a ghost town and it was so sad and disheartening. I heard a statistic that 10 years ago, 46% of these buildings were vacant.
Now, 93% are being used. We were excited about that growth and we wanted to be a part of it. Initially, we briefly considered other spots outside of downtown, but we were adamant that it had to be here.
We had looked at something like a dozen places until we thought we found ‘The One’...and then it totally fell through. It was so disappointing, and all the roadblocks started to bum us out.
Then there was a fall festival at our church in 2022. We were not going to go because we were bumming that day, but then I thought, ‘At least the kids will have fun and there are bounce houses and pumpkins...’ So, at the last minute, we decided to go. While we were there, my husband, Chris, was talking to an acquaintance who asked if we had found a building. My husband said no, and he said that he knew a guy who owned a building he didn’t know what to do with and would connect us.
The next day, we were on a family walk, and Chris's phone rings and it's the guy. He said, ‘I'm at the building right now, do you want to come take a look?’
So, we cut the walk short to run over there and look at it. It looked very different from what it looks like now. I need to see pictures of something for it to make sense, but immediately, Chris, paints a picture of it in his mind of how it will all work. So, even though there were walls all over the place and the upper floor had like 13 rooms or something in it for offices, he saw that the pinball machines could be laid out a certain way. He's like, ‘I think this could really work.’
So, I’ve just always thought it was neat how it worked out. Like what if we hadn't gone to that fall festival, would we have known about this building? He was not even close to putting it on the market. He had no idea what he wanted to do with it yet because there was so much work to be done. It was just special and a blessing the way we heard about it.
We were so thankful for how it worked out. Everything that we suggested to the owner, he was like, ‘That's great. Let's do it!’ Whereas some people who owned buildings in the spaces we were looking at they were like, ‘Axe Throwing…Are you kidding me? No way.’
– Christina Herr, Axecadia
Written by Phil Eich, Storyville
This project was created in collaboration with the DDA (Downtown Development Authority) & Michigan Main Street for Axecadia