Governor’s Gun Club features:
- 35,000 square foot indoor sporting clay facility with trap, skeet and five shooting stands
- 13,000 square foot retail showroom
- 6,000 square foot restaurant and lounge
- 2,900 square foot indoor archery field
- 32-lane pistol and rifle range
- Three 100-yard high-power rifle lanes
- Outdoor archery field and archery hunting simulator
KENNESAW — This city of about 30,000 people, which became nationally known in 1982 for passing a law requiring heads of households to own a gun, is about to get one of the largest indoor gun ranges in the nation.
Plans are afoot for a $10 million facility that, at 83,000 square feet, is only slightly smaller than an average Home Depot store and is being called a “guntry club,” marrying the idea of a country club with a shooting range.
Architect Bert Brown said owners will break ground on the Governor’s Gun Club in June. It will be constructed on a six-acre lot at the corner of Due West Road and U.S. 41.
Brown, president of the architecture firm EGAD Group, said there are many similarities between golf and gun enthusiasts, so the marriage makes sense. He said about 20 million people participate in each.
“You’ve got roughly the same number of participants, income levels are very similar,” Brown said. “That kind of flicked on a light for me that this market would be very accommodating to a country club type of atmosphere.”
And that’s what he has designed.
There will be a restaurant and lounge, suitable for conventions and conferences, along with a 13,000 square foot retail showroom.
But the showpiece of the facility will be an indoor sporting clay facility with trap, skeet and five shooting stands. Brown said it’s the first of its kind in the U.S. He said the most challenging part of designing it was controlling the sound from shotgun blasts.
“It’s the first time that it’s been done, that I’m aware of, in the United States,” Brown said. “The only one I’m aware of is in Germany.”
Kennesaw Mayor Mark Mathews said the development has been planned for a long time, but stalled with the 2008 Great Recession. He said the facility will be an “anchor” for a larger 34-acre development that he hopes will generate significant cash from property taxes, license fees and jobs.
“The club will be the first of its kind in the country, and we anticipate it will be a destination that will attract members from far beyond the local area and have a positive impact on the local economy in general,” Mathews said.
David Mitchell, who built the existing Governor’s Gun Club in Powder Springs, said the site of the new facility already has most of the infrastructure needed for construction to begin, including storm water detention, sewer and fire hydrants.
“That will save us months in construction, virtually allowing us to start digging footings day one,” Mitchell said in a prepared statement.
Kennesaw Mayor Darvin Purdy spearheaded passage of Kennesaw’s gun law in the 1980s in response to a handgun ban passed by Morton Grove, Ill.
Written with wide-ranging exemptions so that it could never be enforced, the law was more publicity stunt than heavy-handed legislative action.
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