Timothy Stemmerman traveled state to state with his wife, Jenny, and picked up jobs here and there as he followed her career. For example, Stemmerman installed an elaborate Star Wars-themed home theater for a client in Arizona. He always found a way to apply the practical skills he learned while growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon. Still, Stemmerman didn’t figure out what long-term career he wanted to pursue until Jenny forced him to try out an escape room.
“I was a little apprehensive at the time,” Stemmerman said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be my thing or not. But my parents were visiting at the time, so we took my parents, my kids and went out and did one and had an absolute blast.”
Stemmerman took his passion and founded the first escape room opportunity in Eugene, Escape Room Oregon. After this venture took off, the Stemmermans decided to expand their scopes to another trendy business model: axe throwing. Oregon Axe is a place to gather with friends where three different “lanes” are available to throw axes at a target. Beer and other beverages are available for purchase to add to the social experience.
But the road to founding multiple businesses began with their first escape room. Stemmerman said he felt the industry was missing something. All the secret doors and special, pop-up clues weren’t really surprises because of the shoddy mechanical work that left the mechanisms visible.
“If something fun and cool and unique is going to happen, you shouldn’t know it’s going to happen until it happens, so we wanted to bring a level of quality into the games that just wasn’t there at the time,” Stemmerman said. “We can do this and make it so much more than what it is now.”
This is how the idea for Escape Room Oregon came to be. Jenny and Timothy Stemmerman decided to take their passion for escape rooms and make it a career in December 2016.
Escape Room Oregon and Oregon Axe are located next door to each other in the old Springfield Lumber Mill right off 5th Street in Springfield, Oregon. The location looks almost like a garage the BFG may park his car in. Adorning both sides of the massive overhang are what look to be a number of offices. But, these spaces have been repurposed for the Stemmerman’s two businesses. Escape Room Oregon is on the second level, almost right on top of Oregon Axe which encompasses the first floor.
“When we were looking around, all these strip mall-type places just weren’t unique,” Stemmerman said. “There wasn’t anything fun about them — and then we found out the city was leasing out these spaces, [we] came to take a look, and [the spaces] fit perfectly for what we were going for.”
The eerie, rustic feel was a great fit for the mysterious escape rooms that Stemmerman wanted to construct. The old lumber mill space would later take a more literal meaning when Oregon Axe had its grand opening on Aug. 24, 2018. It was never in Stemmerman’s original plans to offer beer (they have a two-beer cutoff in the interest of keeping limbs intact) paired with the opportunity to throw an axe at a target with friends.
The couple began to make friends with other escape room owners around the country and got the idea for an axe-throwing location from a friend who opened up a similar venue after her escape room venture. At the time that the Stemmermans were thinking about opening up such a location, the nearest indoor axe-throwing establishments were in Vancouver, British Columbia and San Francisco.
“We drove up to Vancouver, met some friends there in Canada; there were six of us I believe, and we had an absolute blast,” Stemmerman said. “It was a ton of fun.”
So, the family drove back down to Eugene and decided they wanted to show the community of Eugene/Springfield how fun this idea could be — plus, according to Stemmerman, “We’re in the perfect place ever for axe throwing.”
Having grown up in Oregon, the Stemmermans were blown away by the changes happening in Springfield. “The Springfield of the past was not what we saw when we drove through looking for [buildings to rent],” Stemmerman said. “We said, ‘My gosh, downtown Springfield’s really nice.’”
With the addition of many popular new restaurants and pubs like Public House and Planktown, Springfield is beginning to cater to the food-and beer-loving crowd. This change in the downtown Springfield culture has helped the popularity of Oregon Axe and Escape Room Oregon, Stemmerman said.
“Some cities make things very difficult. Other cities are very accommodating and work with you really great, and Springfield is one of those cities,” Stemmerman said. “If I was a person saying, ‘Hey I want to open a business somewhere,’ I would definitely recommend Springfield because they are just fantastic.”
