If I were to design and open a range, I would ...

Yes, I think there are many improvements to be made at a lot of ranges.

My local range is the worst!! For starters its downhill so that makes your yardages a bit worthless not to mention that there are no yardage markers to begin with.They have different colored flags with the yardages to each flag posted on a board.Im hitting to the "Black" flags and look at the board to see how far it is.Hmm lets see... there is Red,Yellow,White and Blue flags posted on the board but NO BLACK!!!

The range by my house has this.  It's actually a great idea because, clearly, most people don't mind using the mats so they only need about 10 grass stalls.  And because they charge a little more for the grass, it's basically only used by "serious" golfers.

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Wait, what?  That's all I need to do?  And all this time I'ev been irritated because every time I go into Golfsmith they seem to be out of impact tape.  Why didn't you tell me this before??

Charge by the hour -- not by the bucket. (This is normal around here for domes in the winter and odd for outdoor ranges)

Have good balls. I used to go out of my way to hit balls on a range with low-grade Callaway balls. They were better than the rock hard balls found on the range.

Have video stalls with excellent simultaneous front and DTL views -- for an additional fee. Allow video to be copied onto a thumb drive.

Have some of the range not flat for downhill, uphill, and sidehill practice.

Put the grass tees on a small berm to promote drainage, but avoid having the downhill range that makes it hard to track yardage.

Avoid putting range at the low point of the golf course or the area, or you will have drainage problems and lose golf balls in the mud.

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If the North and East edge of your range plot (above diagram) are the external bounds of the range, consider having a berm line on both the West and the South side. If you have double to grass tee area, you can rotate the tee line more frequently and maintain better grass through the hot months.

Include a few trees about 100 to 150 yards out. This way, golfers can practice fading and drawing the ball around trees. Mark how tall they are at the top on the range guide, so I can see how high I can hit the ball with different clubs. (Trains the eye on whether or not I can fly that tree out there with, say, a 5 iron.)

Also, have a few prominent trees along the range's back line so people can practice landing tee shots in the fairway. (I dropped 7 of 10 between the oak tree and the red maple).

Note: Three ranges in area have tried multiple ball varieties: two-stripe distance balls, or three-stripe midspin balls for a $1 premium a bucket. But, this rarely lasts for more than a season because of the hassle of manually sorting the balls, increased inventory, etc. IF someone could invent a range ball washer/dryer with an electronic eye to auto-sort the two- and three-stripe balls, this might be a good value-added innovation.

Make sure the friggin yardage signs are correct! My local range will move the teeing area back & forth, without ever moving the signs.

Is it too much to ask to have some range balls that actually still have the dimples on them?

I guess this is another reason why we should all consider laser rangefinders?

Or maybe they could be mapped out via GPS and available along with the thousands of courses?  Obviously, only the ones that have fixed targets would be able to do that.  (They could also map the back fence of the ranges for guys like Jimbo and Darksun)

I mapped the driving range I go to on GPS just using an android app. It actually works pretty well and cost me nothing.

How'd you do it?  Did they let you walk out there one day before they were open, or did you sneak out there at night or something?

Well actually I wrote a super simple app to do it. Literally only has a list of numbers and the color of the flag. I got the latitude and longitude of each flag just off of google maps.

If you can't do that what you can do is find one of the apps on that app store that allows you to map your own courses. I don't know the names of the popular android gps golf apps but I know some of them are free and some of those you can map your own course. So in the course mapping tool (on their website) you could just go in and add a new course and add 1 hole and just navigate over to the driving range. Most of them have options for front back middle, and then you can add your own things which you name yourself... and so you could just add the flags under there.

how does the dry erase work out? I've always taken a roll of duct tape with me to the range with me that I switch out about ever 5 shots. I love the Duct Tape since it's thick enough to protect the face of my irons from the rocks that driving ranges call golf balls and it's also soft enough that it imprints/tears at the location where the impact was on the face. I really dont know what I would do with out my duct tape at the range.

I've thought about opening a range myself and getting "field turf" which is what they are using on soccer, football and lacrosse fields but instead of using the rubber compound that they have on those fields I was going to use a dirt/sand mixture so that you could use tee's like normal ground and the bounce back would be much closer to natural

Great thread, I spend at least 5 days a week at the local range and am amazed at how much revenue opportunity they are missing out on because they don't understand their customers.  Some of the suggestions in this thread are right on the mark.  Why is it that most ranges I've been to seem to be run by land owners who just want to collect money for buckets of balls and don't understand what their customers would like and spend money on?

If I owned a range (possible retirement plan) I'd definitely want to offer real grass and mats.  I'd keep them completely seperate, different stalls and nets so I could offer higher quality ball choices to those that preferred grass.  I'd also have a pro shop inside and offer club fitting and rentals so people could try out different clubs in a more familiar setting without a salesperson trying to sell them.  I'd also provide food services not vending machines so it would be more family friendly.  Allowing customers to pay by the 1/2 hour or by the bucket is a great idea too.

You just reminded me, whenever I see the instruction shows on the golf channel, I've seen them put a regular tee into the "grass" they have there.  It would be nice if that was an option at the range since finding the right tee height on the rubber mats is hard to do.

there is SOOOOOO much that can go into a driving range it's not even funny and a lot of it is common sense stuff that is not done due to laziness i feel. It doesn't have to be 100% state of the art to offer everything that any golfer would need either. Just needs some input from golfers on what a PRACTICE facility should do for them. I know one thing I would do is offer bunkers with different types of sand (and always "churn" the sand in them) on both green side and "fairway". I feel a real pro shop is key as well, everyone LOVES outdoor demos but it's very very hard to find a range with a decent shop side anymore. Also i considered eliminating the need for the pick up cart some how to save the covers of the balls as we all know if you can hear the cover "flapping" after impact that the flight of that ball is irrelevant