Kingsman Tailors - Home Business - NO CC

For some reason, tailor shops seem the ideal place to hide the headquarters of a secret spy agency... from U.N.C.L.E. to Kingsman, a sophisticated sartorial establishment works beautifully as the facade behind which the particularly well-dressed ultra-top-secret intelligentsia conduct their affairs. Hidden away from the prying eyes of the average passer-by, these agents can focus on the important tasks of saving the world, tracking the latest emerging global threats, finding steamy romances, and making sure their cuff links always match their tie bars.

This row of shops, based off of the film Kingsman: The Secret Service, as well as several real-world buildings on London's Bond Street, should fill that role quite nicely for whatever international spy ring you choose to create for your Sims.



If you really think about it, do you know what goes on upstairs from your favorite local bar? How about in the back room of a downtown bodega? Oftentimes, buildings have many more floors than the public sees, and it would be easy to conceal a network of back hallways, offices, meeting rooms, surveillance systems, and training facilities, even in the heart of a bustling metropolitan area. This street is no exception, housing a variety of businesses to function as a cover for the agency behind the scenes, while providing ample space for whatever top-secret threat requires attention this week.
Back from the tree-lined avenue, a variety of different stores cater to the general public. A coffee shop is the perfect place for the local artistic elite to sit an enjoy a spiced latte or overly-sweetened cup of tea, a local pub provides a nice place for nearby workers to escape to after their shift ends, and a bodega serves to provide all the groceries one would ever need in order to cook up fantastic meals back at home. Also in this block are three clothing stores- a three-story department store, with many different sections and styles available to choose from (and fashionable window displays to ensure that pedestrians going by on the sidewalk are inspired to step inside), an ultra-high end boutique, with only the most modern of fashions on display in its pristine white showroom, and in the center of the lot, a well-established tailor shop, providing sharply tailored suits to the business men and women, and well-appointed fitting rooms with a few secrets hidden behind their walls...



The rest of this lot is devoted to providing an intelligence/counterintelligence agency with all the space and resources it needs to carry out its mission. By following the stairway up behind the counter of the tailor shop (or any of the doors leading into the back rooms from either of the other clothiers), you gain access to the upper floors, where conference rooms appointed in traditional styles provide a sophisticated meeting place for your double agents and infiltration experts to meet in safety, offices and libraries provide a home base for them to work out of, and all the comforts of home can be found in the lounges, dining halls, and bed chambers spread throughout the facility.

The upper floors aren't the only places that conceal the resources needed by an intelligence network, however. By going into either of the fitting rooms in the tailor shop, you'll see bookcases (ostensibly filled with notes on the measurements of the tailor shop's various customers), but these bookcases also provide access to hidden rooms and passages behind them. The rear fitting room provides access to a small storeroom, with a door out to the rear courtyard, where an obstacle course is set up for training new candidates. The front fitting room provides the entrance to the elevator that takes agents and candidates down into the shops' basement areas.



The basement is where more of the substance of the intelligence agency is to be found. Virology labs, communications and surveillance rooms, target ranges, and the like are hidden below street-level, as is the agency gym, complete with lap pool and steam room, and the barracks in which new candidates to the agency are housed before being accepted as full-fledged agents. The blending of state-of-the-art technology and centuries-old brick and mortar construction might seem odd, but it helps ensure that this hidden base of operations remains hidden.

Indeed, remaining incognito is the main concern for this headquarters- the various shops lining the street may draw people in with their extravagant window displays and impeccable tailoring, but from the outside, it should occur to no one that an international intelligence/counterintelligence agency might be operating from this same location. This means that this lot can be put in the heart of even the busiest and most trafficked city center without attracting undue attention, while at the same time ensuring that the agents housed within can respond to a crisis in an almost superhuman amount of time, and still be dressed to kill when they arrive. (And really, would you expect anything less from secret agents?)



As far as technical details for this lot go- this is the most expensive lot to date that I've uploaded- ringing in at more than $1.2M. Much of this is simply because of the high price tags associated with the items I've used, rather than their relative abundance, but it is still a very large, very taxing lot for a slower computer to try to run, so you may see some lag if you don't have a newer machine.
As this lot is designed as a home business, it has items from both residential and community lots available on it- some of these may not be easily replaced, so be careful before deleting any in your remodels (unless you don't have Sims living on the lot, and can still just switch back and forth between lot zonings.) It should be fairly obvious which doors will need to be locked in order to keep visitors and customers from wandering into the wrong parts of the lot- each clothing store has a door connecting to the upper levels, just lock them to your preference. The open/closed sign is located outside the entrance to the tailor shop (the door closest to the mailbox and trash can)
Some of the plants I used for decorating the raised gardens aren't reachable to interact with, so if it bothers you not to be able to tend them, you may want to replace them with either plastic shrubbery, or a different breed of plant that doesn't require Sims to tend it on a regular basis.
Finally, I playtested a clone of this lot (My tester Sim was actually too poor to afford it! I had to cheat him into more money first! ), and found no glaring errors, either in normal gameplay or in the running of the lot as a business, however if you find any as you're using the lot, as always, let me know, and I'll see if it's something that I'm able to fix.

Have fun!

Lot Size: 3x5
Lot Price (furnished): $1,259,415

Additional Credits:
While as a whole, this is my assemblage of buildings, certain elements of the interior come from the movie "Kingsman: The Secret Service," and several exteriors are inspired by buildings from Bond Street in London, so some credit should go to their creators as well.