Our Recreational Amenities series has offered some pretty cool features that you can add around your property to help draw people in and to provide a sense of community. You can view them here: www.moblz.com/Extraz/Newz. The next link in our series is about the historic game of horseshoes.

The Game
Horseshoes has been around a long time! There was actually a World Championship in 1907, so there is more than a fair chance that tenants at your property have already played the game. If you aren’t familiar with it, horseshoes is a lawn game played between two people (or two teams of two people) using four horseshoes and two throwing targets (stakes) set in a lawn or sandbox area. The players alternate turns tossing horseshoes at the stakes in the ground, which are traditionally placed 40 feet apart. The score is tallied by how the horseshoes land in reference to the stake.

Potential Costs
For property managers, the beauty of the game is that it’s pretty simple and inexpensive to build. A good horseshoe kit with the four shoes and two stakes can cost as little as $65.  Including the timber and the sand to create the pits, you may only be looking at about a $150 outlay of capital. Even if you add another pit, scoreboards, and walkways from pit to pit, you can easily build a nice horseshoes area for less than $500.

Safety Concerns
For safety reasons, you’ll want to site your horseshoes pits away from where people might normally be walking. If this isn’t possible, you may want to consider fencing in the area. You’ll also want to allow at least 50 feet of space from end to end of the pits. To prevent overthrown horseshoes, definitely include a backstop in your design. Make sure that people stay back at least six feet on either side of the court. Even the best throwers make mistakes.

Horseshoes is a great game! It’s simple to learn and many people already know how to play it. We think it would be a great amenity to add to any property. Once you have yours built, please send pictures our way. We’d love to showcase them in a future email.