Dogwood Festival Popular event returns to streets of Fayetteville Page 7
Apirl 1, 2022 - April 14, 2022 Vol. 1, No. 22
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WEB EXCLUSIVE 29 appointments
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Health Care
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Military Business
Local counties performed $75M+ in federal contracts in 2021 Page 9
PHOTO PROVIDED BY BLACK OPS PAINTBALL & AIRSOFT
A decade old this year, Black Ops Paintball & Airsoft has seen great success since its foundation and will see another expansion soon.
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Editor's Note .......................................... 4 Banking + Finance ................................. 5 Hospitality ............................................. 7 Achievers ............................................... 8 Residential Real Estate ........................13 In The News ...................................14, 16 The List ......................................... 19, 23 Biz Leads ...................................... 20, 21
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PAINTBALL A switch from real estate development to paintball and airsoft entertainment proves to be successful business move a decade later
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By Suet Lee-Growney
B
lack Ops Paintball and Airsoft in Fayetteville, N.C., has experienced national growth since Nathaniel Gienger opened its shop and fields in 2012. “(Geinger) originally had the property as a car shop with a friend and also had some plans to do some real estate development,” said Eric Harris, marketing director of Black Ops. “The real estate was opposed by the county and he had to figure out a second plan.” While brainstorming ideas of what to do with the premises, Gienger’s friend’s son brought up playing paintball in a conversation – a concept that brought back childhood memories of playing in the woods of Gienger’s
family farm in Oregon. He then set up a small netted field in his Fayetteville property and transformed the car shop portion of the property into a staging room, which doubles as a party room. Ten years ago, the field was only a 10-acre park with a speedball field and a small woods-ball field. Today, just the local outdoor vicinity alone has expanded to 300 acres. Additionally, they have since also opened a pro-shop and 13.5-acre park in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and a pro-shop in Lacey, Wash. The manpower behind Black Ops is staffed by mostly combat veterans, according to John Maninga, general manager. Apart from enjoying seeing See PAINTBALL, page 11