Hey guys,
very long time no talk
I hope this place has not completely died during that time!
So, long story short, I am an ex-serious player (I still play sometimes obviously, one can't just quit chess) who very much loves the game and for years now I've been dreaming of opening up a chess academy and/or chess club in my city/country. That's all it was, just dreams, and occasionally brainstorming on how exactly I would proceed with that, but nothing really serious.
Well, I've been getting really fed up with my career in law lately and been thinking about the academy (let's call it that, for simplicity purposes) more and more. Thinking about potential coaches, potential curriculum, monetization, premises, etc. Still nothing super concrete or serious (it's really hard to make a decision to drop a decently well paying career for something like that), but I feel like I am slowly getting there
There is definitely a niche for this where I am at and I believe that the academy would do well, if done the right way.
So, where I would like to ask your input at this stage (probably more input in the future, but for now let's limit it to this) is the premises. If I will ever do this, I will definitely want to do it "right" and invest to the most of my financial capabilities to make sure that the premises are nice, etc., and not some dilapidated dump. But as I am scouring the market for potential premises to either rent or buy, I realized that even though I have some vague ideas/visuals of how it could look, I could definitely use some guidance/ideas/visuals as to what would actually constitute nice premises for a club/academy/how it should be laid out, etc..
I started googling just some names of a few clubs that I know, but they usually have only a few pictures of the inside, if any. Of course the gold standard is St. Louis Chess Club, but there are not that many pictures of how it looks or if there are, it's just separate rooms, but not the entire place, so it's hard to visualize how the entire place looks together. I also checked out Memphis Chess Club, which had quite a few pictures and does look quite nice, even though it is more of a casual chess club/cafeteria type thing and would not be well suited for academy part of it (but might still piggyback some ideas from that!)
So, guys - maybe you know and can share websites of some chess clubs/academies that you know where it would be possible to just see how they look on the inside/how the premises are laid out, etc.? I realize there won't be floor plans or anything like that, but basically, the more pictures, the better
Thanks!