Staff photo / Dan Pompili Bruce Shepas, left, and Harold Porter shake hands in front of a bounce house inside their business, Austintown Bounce. The business is closing its indoor play facility in the Austintown Plaza effective Sept. 9.

AUSTINTOWN — It’s the end of an era for the township and two of its most prominent businessmen.

Austintown Bounce owners Bruce Shepas and Harold Porter said the indoor play facility in Austintown Plaza will close its doors after they accepted “a fair and generous offer” from plaza ownership to buy back the 17,000-square-foot space.

On Sept. 9, they will lock the doors, and they will auction off much of the gaming equipment and other assets on Sept. 13.

Shepas said the deal has been in the works for six months.

“We ended up getting this space for a very minimal amount of money,” he said. “We signed a 10-year lease, and over the past year we’ve been under negotiations with the owners of the plaza, and they were trying to buy our space, not our business.”

Shepas said from a business perspective, it was a very good deal for both sides. He did not say what the sale price was or what he and Porter were paying for the space, only that the plaza could lease it for three times the current rate and he and his partner are very satisfied with the deal.

Still, he said it is bittersweet to close up shop on that part of the business.

“I’ve got mixed emotions about it, and everyone else does too,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of calls from our business colleagues in the area, congratulating us, but we’re also getting a lot of comments from customers and the Austintown community, saying they’re sorry we have to close.”

Shepas said that while staffing, supply issues and inflation can make running a business like theirs challenging, the decision was not made because they were in any financial distress.

Austintown Bounce will continue to operate as a bounce house rental business for parties.

“We’re very thankful to the community of Austintown, we’ve been a part of it since even before 2007,” Shepas said. “Harold and I will continue on as one of the largest and one of the most reliable rental companies in the Mahoning Valley. We’re super excited to move forward, and who knows what the future will bring — maybe you’ll see us somewhere else.”

HOW IT BEGAN

Shepas said the idea came from a poker game 20 years ago, when they got the idea to rent bounce houses. By July 4, 2007, they had a trailer and three inflatables, and an enthusiastic welcome from the community. They opened the first indoor play space on Kirk Road in 2009, which thrived for 14 years.

“Unfortunately, like everybody else, we got shut down during COVID, and when those people were going out of business, Harold and I said ‘let’s double down,'” Shepas said. “Let’s move to the Austintown plaza, double the square footage, double the space, and really open up a giant Austintown Bounce indoor facility for children to play at an affordable price, and that is exactly what we’ve done.”

The auction, scheduled for 10 a.m. at the plaza site on Sept. 13, will be managed by Gallahon Auctions. The business will auction off arcade and redemption games, concessions equipment, TVs, a massage chair, furniture and more. Details are available at gallahonauctions.com.