Paintball facility comes to Buffalo's East Side

A scrap yard on Buffalo's East Side is turning into a professional paintball facility. At Howard and Stetson Street, there are over 3.1 acres of land that will turn into a paintball playground in the next few weeks. Owners Erik Hansen and Joshua Burch want to create a fun and cool recreational area for the Queen City. 

"To have something that is unique to Buffalo will definitely help the city have a cooler vibe and cooler appeal," Joshua Burch said. 

The location is a perfect fit for the paintball playground. The land and old buildings make for an exciting course while the neighborhood adds the character and personality to the area. 

"It's a nice neighborhood, I think there is a lot of stereotypes about the East Side about crime and poor housing and stuff like that," Burch said. "If you come into the neighborhood and you get to know the people over here, you actually find out it is a really nice place."

The owners' plan is to bring in local artists to paint murals and even have one dedicated to the community. The neighborhood is called ghost town and on one side of a building, a mural will be painted to reflect the character of the neighbors. 

Hansen and Burch own Normel Tech, a technical support company based in Buffalo, and they saw the opportunity to fill a need in the area. The nearest professional NXL paintball facility is over two hours away.

The course will consist of a 180x130 yards of professional NXL turf field filled with bunkers and obstacles, a 16-foot netting around the entire course to keep the paintballs inside, and state of the art equipment. Over the next few years, expansion is planned to add a building and woods course to the area as well. 

The grand opening of Normel's Paintball will be August 4th from 10am-8pm and August 5th from 10am-5pm. There will be food trucks, live music, open paintball sessions and artists painting murals on some of the buildings.