• by Tricia Despres , January 2, 2009

Someone spilled beer on your new boots, nacho cheese is dripping onto your shirt and the floor is getting stickier by the minute. What is a concertgoer to do?

At the Peoria Civic Center in Peoria, Ill., people head toward the Schauble Lounge. A model home within the venue, the lounge includes flatscreen TVs, granite kitchen countertops and leather couches similar to the ones used by custom builder Schauble Homes.

"We thought that providing this place would allow us to better communicate with consumers to spread the Schauble brand," says Steve Schauble, president of the company. "With such a large venue, the traffic that passes through the concourse is usually between 2,000 and 8,000 people, depending on which event is taking place, and that is a huge number of people to see our space and associate it with the Schauble name."

The lounge officially opened last year, with building suppliers donating their labor and material for an opportunity to use the lounge as an advertising tool alongside Schauble Homes. Schauble pays the Civic Center a monthly lease for the space, approximately $60,000 a year.

"In the beginning, people were a little hesitant to approach us or come in, because they thought it was a VIP or an invite-only lounge," Schauble says. "Now that the Schauble Lounges have been there for a little over a year, we have a large number of people that make it their place to meet or hang out before the events and during intermissions."