A new experiential entertainment franchise is betting on the value of bringing a playground staple inside with a massive indoor slide park in Austin.

Slick City Action Park has secured a lease for a 43K SF space at 4501 W. Braker Lane. The building most recently housed a Floor & Decor.

The company is seeking permits from the city with plans to open by October, said Alex Benepe, Slick City's vice president of franchise and business development. In addition, it wants to open slide parks in nearby Round Rock and South Austin in the near future.

“We've been expanding aggressively and focusing on key markets around the country, and we have been wanting to get into Austin for a while,” Benepe said.

Slick City can best be described as a water park without the water, with specially designed slides offering twists, turns, length and speed.

It can be challenging for the company, which has headquarters in both St. Louis and Nashville, to set up new parks due to the size parameters needed. Any franchise requires at least a 22-foot clear height inside within spaces ranging from 25K SF to 50K SF. Slick Slide, the manufacturing arm of the company, has more than 20 unique slide designs, some of which are constructed modularly to fit into existing park locations.

Since Slick City opened its first slide park in Lakewood, Colorado, in 2022, it has expanded rapidly, with current and planned locations across 37 states. In late January, the company opened its 26th location in Nashville and has some 35 more sites under development.

Four of its locations were opened by franchisees, with 84 more franchises awarded for possible future development. In September 2025, the company announced it would partner with Activeon, a European trampoline park operator, to expand into Europe.

The parks also include non-slide entertainment options such as arcades, laser tag, and freestyle air courts.

Slick City is not the only family entertainment center that has rapidly expanded in recent years. Urban Air, a Bedford, Texas-based trampoline park brand, has grown from 45 locations in March 2019 to 212 in January 2025, with another 178 in development. In August 2024, the company also added a suite of Adventure Slides to its design and began rolling them out at existing locations.

Global revenue from the family entertainment center market is forecast to jump from nearly $40B in 2025 to about $78.7B by 2030, according to a report by The Business Research Co. The report groups together device-based entertainment like arcades and more active entertainment venues such as Slick City and Urban Air.

The analysis attributes the growth in this space to a combination of increasing urban population density, growth of mall-based entertainment options, rising disposable income, demand for weather-independent recreational options and expansion of youth-oriented recreation spaces.

Not all of that money is being spent on children. The operators of such places have found they appeal to the young at heart as well as the young in body. Some Slick City locations host adults-only and corporate event nights.

Slick City’s latest franchise disclosure document showed 26% of revenue came from adults, Benepe said. He said its “all thrill, no skill” slides are particularly appealing to adults because they don’t require any athletic prowess.

“We get a lot of young adults, and also a lot of parents who pay admission” to slide, Benepe said. “It’s not like other family entertainment centers where you see parents sitting, bored, on their phones.”

Such clientele definitely will need to sign a waiver, however, before hitting the twisting chutes.