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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 11 M E E T T H E M A K E R Luckey and Luckey Climbers Director of Operations Dana Peterson. AT A GLANCE Luckey Climbers Company: Luckey, LLC Industry: Children's climbing structures Year founded: 1984 Headquarters: 300 East St., New Haven Principal: Spencer Luckey, president No. employees: 20 several years later to a roughly 12,000-square-foot space at Chapel Street and Blatchley Avenue. It eventually outgrew that space; hence the purchase the 29,000-square-foot office and industrial building on East Street, where Luckey, Peterson and their 20 employees design, build, package and ship their bespoke play- grounds. Surveying the cavernous East Street warehouse, equipped with four separate gantries and a loading dock that allows trucks to drop off materials directly on site, Luckey explains that his welders, pipecut- ters and designers can now work on three projects simultaneously. "From a logistical, practical level," Luckey says, "this is way easier to deal with." In one corner of the warehouse, one of Luckey's designers is cutting pipes for a sculpture to be shipped to a shopping mall in Carlsbad, Calif. In another corner, an employ- ee is fitting pipes in a lime-green sculpture to be sent to a shopping mall in the affluent Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles. Tucked away in the rear of the warehouse, yet another employee is placing the final touches on a pro- totype for the international chain of family entertainment centers, Chuck E. Cheese's. Another section of the ware- house is fitted with shelves stacked high with wavy wooden platforms, which consist of thin sheets of pliable wood that are glued together and molded into form in vacuum bags. Typically, Luckey explains, his team ships the steel frame super- structure of the jungle gym to a client, and then sends out a team of employees to unpack, attach the platforms and mesh wiring, and install. He adds that the projects can take anywhere between a few months and a few years to com- plete, depending on the client, and that they can range from 20 feet tall to much, much larger. Luckey says his company is on track to have completed 13 climb- ing sculptures by the end of 2018. He's also working on new climbing structures for a children's museum in Qatar, the Valley Fair mall in San Jose and the San Diego Zoo. "We moved here," he says, "and then all of a sudden, there was this huge push of work that just mag- ically came together. If we had to negotiate in the old space, it would have been really difficult." Luckey Climbers' purchase of 300 East St. also included a small, two-story office building immedi- ately adjacent to the warehouse site. Luckey says he hopes to build out a Luckey Museum in the space, complete with its own two-story Luckey Climbers sculpture. He also wants the future museum to showcase some of his father's architectural artifacts, include miniature wooden carousel models, chairs, boats -- and lots and lots of climbing sculpture designs. "is will be an ongoing project that will hopefully take many, many years," he says of the museum, "and grow incrementally over time." A version of this story originally appeared in the New Haven Independent. n "We moved here and then all of a sudden, there was this huge push of work that just magically came together. If we had to negotiate in the old space, it would have been really difficult." - Spencer Luckey

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