Family entertainment center to open in Carthage in March

Jan. 5—About Myers Park G3 Entertainment will be the latest addition to a growing retail and residential development in what was for decades before 1997 the Myers Park Airport. The airport was closed after loud and sometimes heated community debate, and the Walmart Super Center was the first business to go into the area, followed by a former hardware store that's now a church and Lowe's Home Improvement store in 2007. Also completed in recent years were two senior living centers and a bank. The city of Carthage built a street to connect Garrison Avenue at Airport Drive to Garrison at George E. Phelps Boulevard, opening up more property to easy development, then in 2021 the Missouri Department of Transportation finished a roundabout at Garrison Avenue, Fairlawn Drive and Elk Street to mirror the roundabout built at Fairlawn Drive, Airport Drive and Grand Avenue and allow better traffic flow to the Myers Park development. The city paid half the cost of the roundabout and widened the roundabout at Garrison and George E. Phelps to further improve traffic flow.

CARTHAGE Mo. — Tom Garrison and his family and staff are in the final weeks of construction of their 36,000-square-foot G3 Entertainment Complex at 2433 Garrison Drive, in the middle of the Myers Park business complex in south Carthage.

The blue-and-gray building has been growing on the former airport site since October 2022 when Garrison and his family broke ground.

Garrison said the interior fittings for a massive play and entertainment complex are closer to completion every day.

"I want to be open sometime in February, but I'm not going to promise that's going to happen," Garrison said Thursday. "I have a bowling league scheduled for March 6 and I've got a tournament scheduled middle of March already, so we're definitely open by March."

Garrison said a 24-lane bowling alley will take up a big part of the building.

"The bowling alley is about 50% complete now," Garrison said. "They're telling me second week of February they'll be finished with that. Then my play areas — I've got one of them 100% up and the other is about 60% finished as we speak. My restaurant area is coming together. I finally got my Ansul (fire suppression) hood finished up. and we're moving all the appliances in place and trying to get it where it needs to be. We're almost down to the trim stage, installing doors and trim. It's coming. It's been a long process. There's been a lot to do here."

Garrison described the two play areas as a child's dream playhouse.

"The toddlers and younger kids are going to find three stories of absolute chaos," Garrison said. "They can run all over the place in three stories of fun. It's about 100 feet by 40 feet; that's how big the play structure is. ... We've got multiple slide areas, zip lines on it, crawl-throughs; we've got all kinds of stuff going on in the kids' area. And we've got a little toddler area that is connected to that, for the little ones 2 and under. They've got their own little slide area as well."

The second play area is set up for children age 10 and older all the way to adults.

"The ninja course is an obstacle course that is a timed event, and there are targets in there that you swipe a band across, and you earn points for each target that you get and, you get more points the quicker you can run the course," Garrison said. "It's two stories tall. The band straps around the palm of their hand, so they reach up and swipe in front of the target and the target picks up their signal."

Garrison said the prices to use the play areas are still a work in progress, but he believes they will be available on an hourly basis, while the bowling alley can be available on an hourly basis or the complex could charge by game.

Garrison said the restaurant will offer a variety of foods for the entire family.

"We've got the capability to seat 85 people, I think, and we're going to serve everything from broasted chicken to pizza and a little bit of everything in between," he said. "We're trying to set down a family-friendly environment, and hopefully I've got something here that the entire family can show up and we'll have something for every one of them to do."

Soon after opening the main building, Garrison said, work will begin on an 18-hole miniature golf course. He hopes it will be finished by summer.