Loudoun’s newest training and entertainment complex, XCAL Shooting Sports and Fitness, formally opened Saturday.
The $30 million, 95,000-square-foot center features a state-of-the art indoor gun range, an upscale fitness center, one of the region’s largest firearms retail stores, a restaurant, and a private club for members.
The center is the dream of Jason Brown and brought to reality with the help of his retired Navy officer father, Jeffrey F. Brown.
The opening comes 16 years after Jason began developing the concept and more than a decade after he started partnering with his father to flesh it out. They bought the land—next to two other well-established Ashburn entertainment destinations, TopGolf and the iFLY indoor skydiving center—in 2017.
But XCAL is expected to be more than a regional destination for gun enthusiasts. It’s a family-owned business with designs on serving the surrounding neighborhoods as a community asset.
“We have three generations of Browns working here. You don’t do this without family, and it is great being here with family working, and we’ve got an employee group back here that we treat like family,” Jeffrey Brown said during the opening ceremony attended by state Sen. John J. Bell (D-13) and Supervisor Sylvia Glass (D-Broad Run).
While the center offers exclusive memberships that provide access to a private club with a full bar, restaurant, billiard room, cigar room, conference space rooms, monthly memberships for use of the firing ranges or the second-floor fitness center are designed to fit most household budgets.
“We want the community who lives here to be able to afford to come here,” Jeffrey Brown said.
The hallmark of the center is the shooting range complex, built as a separate concrete bunker largely wrapped in acoustic material with innovations that include a sophisticated ventilation system and cameras that provide range safety officers a forward-facing view of the shooters.
“All that design work here was to create a safe, quiet, healthy environment for new shooters and experienced shooters to come in and really have a great time at the range,” he said. “It’s just the cleanest, quietest range you’ll ever see.”
The shooting complex includes a tactical range that can be opened up from its lane configuration for specialized training, a luxury range and five private ranges.
Other elements serve to separate XCAL from other area ranges, such as leaving politics at the door and providing a welcoming alternative to the typically gruff or grumpy range officer.
“We’re not political at all here. We’re going to train and build enthusiasm for the sport of shooting, and we think that is what we need to do. We believe in how much fun that is,” Brown said. The center offers rental weapons and lessons for novices wishing to learn the proper, safe way to handle firearms.
He noted the first reaction that he sees in most first-time shooters: “It is just a big smile, and that’s what we believe in. We believe in doing it right—to be a great place to shoot, and work out, and eat, and shop.”
XCAL Shooting Sports and Fitness is located at 44950 Russell Branch Parkway in Ashburn. Learn more at xcal.com.
