The Factory in Wake Forest: the complete guide to the town’s play warehouse

At 1839 South Main Street sits the single most useful building in Wake Forest for anyone with children, a rainy Saturday or a birthday to host. The Factory is a former industrial plant converted into a sports, entertainment and dining complex, holding two sheets of ice, a 15,600-square-foot laser tag arena, batting cages, restaurants, an ice cream shop and dozens of other tenants across 28 retail and leisure spaces. Our spotlight calls it the answer to the family logistics problem, and this is the complete guide to what's inside.

The anchors

• Polar Ice House runs two sheets of ice, which no other rink in the area currently matches, with public skating sessions, learn-to-skate programs for kids, adult and youth hockey leagues and birthday packages. Our spotlight on where the town learns to skate covers it in full. It also runs track-out, teacher workday and summer camps.
• Battle House Laser Tag occupies a 15,600-square-foot space inside the building, running objective-based, mission-driven laser tag instead of the aimless variety, with free play, team games, party packages and private rooms. It's fully indoors, which is the entire point in July and January.
• D-BAT keeps the batting cages that give local ballplayers, in our spotlight's phrase, a year-round season.
• North Wake Baseball at the Factory ballpark extends the sports side outdoors.
• House of Sports adds another athletic tenant to the complex, with its own camp programming.

Eating and treats

The food side matters more than a sports complex usually manages. Two Roosters Ice Cream, the Raleigh institution known for inventive flavors, opened a location inside the building in August 2023 and functions as the reward at the end of every visit. Gonza Tacos y Tequila covers the sit-down meal, with a patio that ranks in our patio guide. The practical implication is that a family can spend four hours here without leaving for food, which is the difference between an outing that works and one that collapses at lunchtime. The wider dining picture is in the where-to-eat guide and the frozen options in the dessert guide.

The building itself

The Factory is a genuine adaptive reuse story. The site was the Athey Products plant, built in the 1960s on South Main where a rail siding could receive steel and ship out street sweepers and construction equipment, part of the industrial recruitment that followed the college's 1956 departure, a sequence our railroad guide and short history of downtown both cover. Athey is gone, swept away by economic change, and the building became something else entirely.

Today it holds 28 retail-plus-leisure spaces ranging from about 800 to 18,000 square feet, with 26 occupied as of recent reporting, and the property's manager has described it as an under-discovered spot working on a reintroduction to the community. That mix, sports anchors plus small independent businesses, is what makes the place function as a destination instead of a single-purpose facility, and it's one of the better examples of industrial reuse in the county alongside the mill conversions in our Glen Royall guide.

The tenant mix beyond the anchors

The sports names get the attention, but the rest of the roster is what makes the building work as a destination. The property runs 28 retail-plus-leisure spaces from roughly 800 to 18,000 square feet, occupied by a mix of small independent businesses alongside the big draws: fitness operations, specialty retail, service businesses and food. That variety is deliberate, since a complex with one attraction empties out when that attraction closes, and one with twenty keeps people circulating. It also gives small local businesses a high-visibility home at a scale downtown storefronts can't offer, which is a genuine economic function in a town where retail rents keep climbing, per the growth guide.

Planning a visit

• Parking is ample, which is not true of downtown and matters with strollers, hockey bags and gear.
• Arrive 30 minutes before a booked activity, which is Battle House's own advice: check in, hit the arcade, grab ice cream, and start on time instead of rushed. Allow extra for Capital Boulevard traffic coming up from Raleigh.
• Check ages and sizes. Laser tag works for all ages, though six- and seven-year-olds do better with a parent playing alongside given the equipment weight and mission complexity; parties have run for eight-year-olds and a 75th birthday on the same day.
• Book skating and cage time ahead, since public sessions and lanes fill on weekends and school breaks.
• It's fully indoors, making it the reliable answer for rain, heat, cold, school breaks and any weekend when outdoor plans fail.

The camps and programs layer

One function that matters enormously to working parents and goes underadvertised: the Factory's tenants run programming on the days schools don't. Polar Ice House offers track-out camps for the year-round calendar, teacher workday coverage and summer camps, and other tenants run their own sessions. In a county with year-round school tracks, track-out weeks are a recurring childcare problem, and a complex that runs camps on exactly those weeks solves something real. Registration follows the same pattern as everything else locally: it opens early and fills, per the camps roundup.

Who it's for

Nearly everyone, which is unusual. Toddlers and young kids get skating, the arcade and ice cream. Older kids and teenagers get laser tag, cages and sports, which is why it appears prominently in the teenager's guide. Adults get hockey leagues, a taco dinner and somewhere to sit while children exhaust themselves, which the grandparent's guide treats as the whole point. Birthday hosts get multiple venue options under one roof, compared in the birthday planner. Camp-seeking parents get track-out, teacher workday and summer sessions, per the camps roundup. And anyone facing a washed-out weekend gets the reliable answer, per the rainy day guide.

The larger significance: a fast-growing town needs indoor capacity, and Wake Forest got its by reusing a factory instead of building a big box. The families in our kids' guide treat the place as infrastructure, and the 1960s street-sweeper plant is now, on a Saturday morning, one of the loudest and happiest buildings in the county.