The Bel Air Planning Commission at a special meeting in April approved a special development application from Active Play Adventures Bel Air LLC (doing business as Vault Active Play) to convert a vacant Pep Boys retail bay at the Baltimore Pike/Atwood Road property into an indoor trampoline park, subject to conditions including shared parking, recorded easements and a required manager on duty.

Town planning staff told the commission the proposed amusement center would occupy about 13,674 square feet on the main floor with a proposed 1,925-square-foot mezzanine to be used for party rooms and storage. The application seeks to rehabilitate the existing Pep Boys retail bay while the auto service bays on the Atwood Road side would remain unchanged. Staff said the mattress store and Bel Air Police Department and Harford County Public Schools reviewed the proposal and had no comments; those responses are in the commission packet.

Why it matters: the project would bring an entertainment use and local jobs to a building that has stood largely unchanged for decades, while raising planning questions about parking, circulation, landscaping, lighting and trash handling that the commission addressed with conditions.

Staff and applicant presentations

Planning staff explained the town's parking calculation: the mattress store (5,005 sq. ft.) requires 20 spaces; motor vehicle service (8,682 sq. ft.) requires 29 spaces; the amusement center main floor (13,674 sq. ft.) requires 68 spaces; and the mezzanine (1,925 sq. ft.) is calculated at one space per 200 sq. ft. Staff noted a counting error in the submittal and concluded the site required roughly 123 spaces while 116 to 117 were shown on the plan, producing a shortfall the applicant asked to address through shared parking.

The applicant presented a parking-demand study concluding the site's proposed 117 spaces would be adequate because peak demand for the auto service and mattress store occurs during daytime hours while the amusement center's peak is evenings and weekends. The applicant and agent also described modest site changes intended to add about 19 spaces by reconfiguring islands and restriping, planting nine additional shade trees and five ornamental trees, and adding shrubs along Baltimore Pike to improve buffering.

Operations, safety and staffing

James J. Riley, identified himself as an operator and longtime trampoline-park developer, and described programming planned for children and families: fewer than 30 active trampolines, soft-play for toddlers, party rooms on the mezzanine, a small café that assembles preprocessed food and some arcade games. Riley said the operation would hire locally — he estimated hiring “upwards of 80 employees” — and that there would be court monitors (supervisory staff) and a manager on duty at all times.

“The goal for this location is to be technology and interactive based. I want to get the kids, from out of their bedrooms and on their phones and out to the public and being active,” Riley said.

Commission conditions and technical requirements

Commissioners required, and placed into the approval, a condition that at least one manager of majority age (18 or older) be present at all times the facility is open. The commission also approved the motor-vehicle-service findings separately and adopted a set of conditions that staff read into the record. Those conditions include:

- Submission of a final site plan for signature prior to building permit application that incorporates staff and Department of Public Works comments and the comments from Harford County Public Schools and the Bel Air Police Department.
- Approval to share six parking spaces between the mattress store and the amusement center based on the applicant’s parking study, with the commission noting the study's conclusion that peak demands do not overlap.
- Execution and recordation of access, stormwater management and parking easements between the two parcels to ensure shared maintenance and legal access for parking and stormwater facilities.
- Installation and Town Planning-Department approval of a screened dumpster enclosure; the commission explicitly required all on-site dumpsters to be screened.
- Submission of a final landscape plan prior to building-permit application showing the additional trees and shrubs noted in the staff report.

On lighting and signage, the commission noted one existing pole light near the parcel boundary that the applicant agreed to keep in place on a concrete pedestal to avoid more extensive lighting work; storefront signage and a new freestanding face on the road-front sign will be handled through a separate sign permit with the Department of Planning.

What was not decided or remains to come

The commission did not set a firm maximum occupancy number; staff and the applicant said final building capacity will be set by the county/architectural review and local fire code during the building-permit process. The applicant said equipment capacity (how many people the attractions can safely host at one time) will be substantially lower than theoretical building capacity.

The approvals are conditional on submitting the required final plans and recording the easement/agreement documents; building permits, a business-occupancy inspection and all sign permits remain outstanding before operations could begin.

Ending

Staff said the project reuses existing retail space and requires only interior reconfiguration and modest exterior changes; with the conditions adopted by the commission the applicant may proceed to finalize and record the easement documents and submit the final site, landscape and building plans required for permits.