TIFFIN — As rain spat on an expanse of golf turf after 9 p.m. Monday in Tiffin, a group of four friends hitting golf balls weren’t bothered by the weather or the dark or even the fact that they recently played their last 18 holes of the season on a traditional golf course.
“Yesterday, we played up in Cedar Rapids, and they were the last course to be open,” said Connor Whalen, 21. “Everybody’s closed for the winter now.”
Everyone except PinSeekers, 1515 Andersen Place, a year-round hybrid-golf and gaming facility and the newest addition to Tiffin’s expanding retail and entertainment options.
“So this is nice to have,” Whalen said Monday of the venue, novel to Eastern Iowa, after taking his turn in a PinSeekers contest to hit his ball nearest a handful of targets — each illuminated by large fluorescent circles, visible to passing motorists along nearby Interstate 380.
Whalen and his friends from North Liberty said they’ve been watching the golf venue develop for months and planned to come opening day — Monday — when the facility swarmed with others who apparently had the same idea.
“We still have people rolling in,” General Manager Ben Splichal said late Monday — with the parking lot full and about two hours left until its 11 p.m. closing.
“We have no history so there are some unknowns there,” he said of hurdles PinSeekers might face attracting newcomers at the outset. “But we’re prepared to be very busy going forward.”
‘Premier entertainment’
PinSeekers — open daily from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until midnight Friday and Saturday and until 10 p.m. Sunday — is a TopGolf-type experience, but with key differences from the popular, high-tech golf-entertainment business that has more than 80 locations nationwide, although none in Iowa.
Both PinSeekers and TopGolf use TopTracer technology — involving advanced golf ball-tracking tools.
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But PinSeekers set its entertainment sights beyond golf, Splichal said, also offering “mini duckpin bowling,” multisport simulators, a restaurant, bar and a custom-built putting course that is not your typical mini golf “with the clown’s mouth or waterfall.”
“It does mimic a real-life green on a golf course,” Splichal said of the 18-hole putting green. “There are pars on each hole.”
PinSeekers offers pool tables and darts, large-screen TVs and plenty of space for 200-person events, company outings, bachelor parties, birthday experiences, field trips and tournaments. Players can pay hourly rates for the 56 hitting bays or buy memberships offering families the ability to play two hours a day.
Starting this fall, PinSeekers is hosting men’s, women’s, co-ed and junior leagues involving two-player teams — with the possibility for regular season play and bracketed playoffs featuring payouts up to $1,000.
“We just want to be a premier entertainment facility,” Splichal said of the all-season golf-centered experience.
“Always assume we’re playing,” according to a league summary about “bad weather” events. “If it’s going to be too cold or too much snow, we will make a decision by 2:30 p.m.”
Why Tiffin?
The Tiffin-based PinSeekers is one of two locations — the first debuting about a month ago in DeForest, Wis. Both are run by the same group of investors, according to Splichal, who lives in North Liberty.
“One of our owners has been in this arena for quite some time — as far as the golf ranges and entertainment,” he said. “So a group of people just got together, decided to get the business model together … and it came to fruition.”
As to the question of why Tiffin, Splichal pointed to its growth.
“The Eastern Iowa corridor — Iowa City, Cedar Rapids — is a very up and coming area,” he said, noting the right opportunity presented itself in land near the juncture of Tiffin, Coralville and North Liberty along I-380 near Interstate 80.
Over a stretch of 450-plus acres, PinSeekers is part of Tiffin’s Park Place development — slated to include new upscale living, restaurants, bowling, and a theater.
That development coincides with growth across the interstate along Forevergreen Road in North Liberty, where both the University of Iowa and Steindler Orthopedic Clinic are building massive new health care facilities.
Steindler’s 35,880-square-foot, $29.3 million ambulatory surgery center — envisioned as one piece of a 36-acre health care campus to include a new orthopedic clinic, hospital and hotel — is slated to open in early 2025.
That’s around the time UI Health Care plans to begin treating patients in its new $525.6 million, 469,000-square-foot hospital campus just a mile and a half west of the Steindler project — where supporting businesses have and continue to pop up in the form of new restaurants, car washes, coffee shops, and condos.
Tiffin: Iowa’s fastest growing city
“Certainly there's going to be some opportunities,” Tiffin City Council member Skylar Limkemann said about continued development in his community — which has been the fastest growing city in Iowa for years. “You build a hospital, and there are going to be things that pop up around that.”
The most recent official U.S. Census Bureau count revealed Tiffin’s population more than doubled, at a rate of 132 percent, from 1,947 in 2010 to 4,512 in 2020. From 1990 to 2000, Tiffin bounced from 460 residents to 975.
And its numbers continue to climb, according to more recent census estimates of 5,808 Tiffin residents in 2022 — up 29 percent from 2020 — and 6,795 people living there this year, up 51 percent from three years ago.
As part of a traffic study for a massive update of the I-380/I-80 interchange, the Iowa Department of Transportation counted 15,000 freight trucks a day passing through Tiffin, along with 100,000 passenger vehicles, Limkemann said.
“And that was actually a 2019 or 2020 number, so it’s higher now,” he said. “We just continue to blow up. And the more people coming through the community, the more businesses are coming.”
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