For most of us collectors, we get a machine or three and enjoy them, and at some point have to decide... either we expand and make room for more or we rotate games in and out or figure something else out, but it's all too easy to reach "pinball critical mass" once you're bitten by the bug. Some people settle on enjoying a few machines, some pack their houses and garages, some have storage places for machines. And a few try to take it to the next level, putting games on location or creating some kind of public/semi-public place for their games. Who hasn't dreamed about what they could do if they had more space and resources?

I think it was about 2-3 years ago I started to ask myself what actually was I doing? My collection started to morph from various games I picked up and restored for enjoyment (that I found myself having difficulty selling or trading away) into a nice-sized collection that would give any 80s arcade a run for its money. First I sacrificed my dining room table to the pinball gods, then my garage, then a second place and another garage, then a workshop. The next thing I knew I was putting a hoist in the stairwell and dragging machines upstairs into bedrooms. I rationalized that I was only doing this temporarily until I could "find a place" to put all the games in one location.

I'm a businessman and entrepreneur by trade, so I'd like to think I didn't have any naive notions about creating a retro arcade and having it suddenly be monstrously successful. I'm not a guy with a ton of cash who can buy an office building and throw my collection into it unfortunately, and the stories about the problems with Tiltown, the National Pinball Museum and tons of other clubs, arcades and barcades brought me back down to reality. It's not impossible, but it's not as simple as, "If you build it they will come." And the unfortunate reality is from a municipal point of view, existing coin-op laws don't make pinball viable, so is there any way to "have your cake and eat it too?" That was my dilemma. Could I set something up and continue the path I was on restoring machines and sharing them, or did I reach terminal velocity?

So here's my story, which is still in its infant stage, and maybe it won't get beyond there, but I thought I might share what I've been trying to do and the roadblocks I've run into.

I'm not a super-collector. I'm just an average guy with a nice batch of machines, and me and a few other collectors have been talking for the last year or two about what we could do with our machines. IMO, it all hinged on the property. If we could find the right piece of property at the right price, we could put our project on the map.

Another odd thing.. I guess different people are in the hobby for different reasons.. Up until about two years ago, my main motivation was learning electronics and enjoying the satisfaction of bringing these old games to life. It wasn't really a social thing for me, but I loved sharing my games with other people, and then I started attending the pinball conventions and helping out and meeting other enthusiasts, which then prompted me to branch out online and try to help and share my experiences with others. It's been very rewarding. I'm probably more of an introvert but it's been fun and now I want to do even more and try to set up a local place for enthusiasts to share. So I'd been formulating a plan...

The Idea: A pinball club - not necessarily a bona fide arcade, but something more like PAPA that is otherwise non-public but open now and then to host events and things. We opted for this model because, well, nobody really wanted to quit their day job and manage such a venture on a full-time or commercial basis. But we had no real venues in my area that had pinball games, no places to play tournaments or anything like that, and here, I've discovered there's a lot of enthusiasts that don't know there are others around. We need a home base.

The Approach: ultra-conservative. The reason most ventures fail is because the overhead is so high that there's too much pressure to see a return, and then it stops being "a place to have fun" and more of "we need to make money to pay the rent"-type deal.

So I looked at what resources I had available. I'd been doing a number of things out of my house for awhile from doing pinball/arcade collecting to hosting music acts, online cybercasting and stuff. And I had a nice collection of games as well as all kinds of cool tech equipment, lighting, stage, PA, and other hacker-type projects, and me and my friends share a love of music and pinball and we thought, is there a way to create a venue for our outlets and make it viable?

I've noticed when you get a bunch of people together and you start talking about "what ifs" there is no shortage of ideas or enthusiastic rants about what could be possible, but when it comes time to turning those ideas into reality, how do you do it?

Everyone in our group had plenty of ideas... oh let's rent a big warehouse here, or let's look at this building over there. But when it came time to look at how much money it would actually cost and ask who was going to put up money or put their name on the lease, it was like you could hear a pin drop.

It quickly became obvious that while everyone was into it, nobody really wanted to take the reins, especially if those reins required any significant monetary commitment. Ok, that's not surprising. So I thought, what can I afford to pull off if I'm the only one putting something on the line? And I thought, it all hinged on finding the right piece of property at the right price. Until then, nothing could happen. So the project basically was put in "stasis."

Then one day I was riding around in my area and found this abandoned church property... by this time I had this laundry list of ideas and requirements for a certain piece of property.. it had to be in a safe area, it had to be in a certain price range, and it had to be the right physical configuration to handle the project.
For the first time I started to visualize the reality of this happening.. Me and my friends started researching the situation with the property. It had been flooded in the levee breach during Hurricane Katrina and the church never re-opened. It had been purchased by another group who wanted to open it as a church but couldn't, so it has been sitting vacant for 7 years.

For the next two months we began trying to figure out who owned the property, getting in touch with them and trying to see if it was practical to get the property. An agreement was negotiated with the sellers and things were put in place, we got a chance to look at the property and realize it was going to need a lot of work to bring back to life.. not impossible, but there was no electrical to the building since Katrina, so the city would have to send an inspector out and all the wiring and everything would have to be brought back up to code.

Our group has a bunch of contractors and others who know all about construction, wiring, plumbing, A/C, etc. We factored how much money would be required in a worst-case scenario to redo all the electrical and other stuff. I brought out inspectors to look over every facet of the operation. We estimated there would be quite a bit of work needed, but still doable if everybody chipped in.

I've come to realize that in these cases it seems there's usually one person who "makes it happen." It's just the nature of the beast. Someone puts their butt on the line, either signing a lease or purchasing a property. I was willing to take the chance... and here we are asking ourselves... is this a cool idea or a crazy idea? I have to admit, I seem to alternate between waking up one morning and thinking this is going to be the coolest thing ever, and then asking myself "oh no! what have I done???" It's scary.

The plan is to have not just a pinball club, but a museum/repair/leaning/media center that is nestled here in Louisiana. We put our collections together and showcase them for anyone who wants to visit. Crazy idea or what?

Right now I am wrestling with the banks trying to make the deal happen. It's not like I can't swing the mortgage on the property but the banks now have so many restrictions, they will not lend money on a piece of property that isn't immediately habitable, so I've had to be creative in how I can get a loan (instead of a traditional loan, I have to do this high-rate loan off my home as collateral). And while all my friends and associates are supportive, they're not supportive to the point where they'll want to put their skin in the game, so it has to be me. I don't mind taking the risk. I am at a point in my life where I feel I need to take a chance, playing it safe isn't going to be nearly as rewarding.

Can anyone else relate to what situation I find myself in? I have a bunch of friends and associates who are all supportive, but someone is going to have to lay their butt on the line to pave the way for it becoming a reality. It looks like I'm the only one willing to do it. I don't have any kids. This project would basically be my "baby." It would be something I'd create that I'd want to live on in one way or another. That probably sounds stupid but that's the way I think about it. It centers around pinball, but there is also another aspect to it.. the idea is that we'd make the place a "cyber stage" and be able to broadcast on the Internet what's going on and share the whole idea of the hobby and pull in other creative aspects in the process.

Another part of the project is setting up a big workshop that would be video-enabled, so that as I work on machines, it could all be recorded and broadcast. This property has a large area we could build out into a really nice workshop, and wheel games in and out and document everything that's done.

We've thought about this. But aren't ready to really do any solicitation until we had a very clear plan and the property was secured. It's definitely cheaper to purchase than rent and it gives us the option of really making the place into something special. And then there is the idea of how to structure the place and provide value to say, somebody who might be out of town who wants to support the effort.

I really wanted to not talk much about the project until we were further along, but some of my friends thought it might be a good idea to see what kind of support and interest among the community it would have. My non-pinball friends were skeptical that the pinball community was very cohesive. And in the last week, the bank has given me a whole bunch of hassles which has prompted me to ask myself, "Is it worth it?" I guess I've been feeling beaten up by underwriters telling me that even though I have great credit and collateral, they don't want any part of the deal.

The plan would be if this goes through to document how we turn the place around and make it into a really neat space for enthusiasts.

Yea, I'm aware of that. I wouldn't start the project if I didn't have some of the resources to be able to make it happen even without a lot of support. And I have a few friends who have been right there along with me from the beginning - I couldn't have even considered this without their support, but ultimately, I think one person is going to have to "make it real."

Yea, I've talked with Clay as well as Tim Arnold and other people. I'm still chatting with others and getting advice. You are right in that the venture could easily turn south and I could be left holding the ball. This is why the parameters for the venue are a certain way, a certain type of building at a certain price. If it didn't work out, I don't think I'd lose my house. The venture isn't that risky. But I'd certainly be sitting on top of a piece of property with limited use. A church building that can't be used as a church might make a great arcade or private club/museum, but otherwise not terribly practical. So there has to be a "price point" where I could at least stay above water if all else failed.

And everybody loves the idea, but not enough to take a piece of the risk/reward, so it falls on me to contemplate it. I appreciate your feedback. Nothing wrong with going over all the options, and if we move forward with this, I want to chronicle every step of the way and share it.

Yea, I very well aware of this "syndrome." I've been doing musical events and things like this for years out of my home studio and when it's free people come, especially if there's food and stuff, but if you ask them to help cover things, the number of enthusiastic participants wanes dramatically. I started to make a note of who would bring food and drinks to the parties and who would just show up and suck everything down, and I ended up with an "A-list" of people who always got invited to things first.

The "Plan B" is a critical part of the venture, and I definitely want to learn from your experience. To me, the key to making everything work is the numbers have to work out based on almost nobody helping, then everything else is gravy, but that's not always practical.

That's my strategy. I reverse-engineered the numbers. I thought to myself, "if I can get x people to pay $y a month and have the operating expenses for the club fit in that budget, then I don't have to have to be forced to manage x+50 people on a regular basis." What I did was actually create a survey and ask everyone who was interested, "how much would you pay a month to be in the club? how important is it for you to be a core/charter member? would you pay more to have the club be more exclusive? would you be more willing to put your own games in the club if it were more exclusive?" And based on the responses I got, I figured out how much a place would have to cost to support a group of the most-reliable members.

We planned on doing several levels of membership in the $50-$100 range. Although if I could get a smaller number of folks do higher amounts, I can certainly see the appeal to that. And on top of that we'd open the place up semi-regularly for people to either pay one price to play, provide a donation, or have the games take coins. I agree with cfh's contention that having games on free play kinda takes the fun out of it.

What's stopping the club project for me right now is a funding issue. It's like a catch-22. Even though I've negotiated a really decent price on the building we want to use, it's been abandoned since Katrina and gutted, and the banks won't lend money on this type of property. I've talked to five different banks and even though I have plenty of collateral and perfect credit, they don't like the nature of what I'm doing and won't help with a loan unless it's a very predatory-type loan that is short term and high interest rate. It's really bumming me out because we've done a ton of research and work, and I didn't pay all my bills on time for the last 20 years, and have perfect credit to be told by the bank that I've used for the last few decades that they aren't interested... the whole banking climate now has changed. And I'm at a loss as to what to do and we're exploring other options.

Interesting. One thing I really want to do is offer IFPA tournaments, and I guess in order to do that I'd have to have the place open to the public during the event? I take it you're not into the tournaments? Do you ever do organized competitions or league play? Or is it more like a man-cave-type deal with freeform pinball playing?

I know you're not a fan of games on free play, so if you have $100+/month members, are they still paying to play the games in the club?

That's worth looking into... I just wonder how limited the options are these days with respect to financing?

One issue for me is, if I'm mortgaging my house and putting most of the money from renovations into the property, I don't want the property owned by the non-profit. If I could own the property and lease it to the non-profit that would work. But one of the motivating factors that keeps me committed to making the project work is, if all else fails, I can still use the building for other purposes and there's something to be left after all the hard work it put in. It's one of the advantages over throwing away money paying someone else rent. And this is the same deal I offered any of the other charter members... want to go in on a building? They all balked. That's fine. Someone has to do it, and to me, it means I'm committed to making things work. I've been involved in other clubs where nobody really had any equity in the operation or its resources, and as soon as there were conflicts or someone became disillusioned, the whole foundation started to crumble. It's one way to assure principals in the project are commuted.

By the way it's hard to not get excited when there's cool tools like this where I can map out how to use the space.. In this case, the building is sectioned off into an large open area, and smaller rooms - the plan would be to use the back area as a workshop, put most of the games in the big area, and at least, not knock out too many walls. Here I play with how games would fit into the existing layout without any demo

pinchurch3d-1.jpg pinchurch3d-2.jpg

I've been trying to figure out some way to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe run the games on tokens and for members allow them unlimited tokens, but when guests come they have to buy tokens? I really like your original idea that having the games on freeplay devalues the playing experience so I'm wondering if there is a way to compromise?

Update on the club project... things are moving forward. Tomorrow I sign the deal for the funding. Act of sale happens in a few days and this week I'm meeting with contractors to go over the renovations and work on the building.

As Clay has said, you have to be in this for the love of the game and the efforts. If pinball were actually profitable, you'd see the games everywhere. And what makes the project work for me is the space; the building, the location and configuration. It's an odd piece of orphaned property that has been abandoned that our group is going to enjoy turning into something special. The advantage over renting is, we can pretty much do what we want with the place. We can make it really funky and special. It will probably start off modestly because the whole project is being done on a shoestring budget and will ultimately be funded and maintained by the members and fans, but the goal is to make this place different and fun.

Anyway, if everyone is interested, I'd like to chronicle the progress of the club here for people to enjoy.

Since our group is out of New Orleans, we came up with the name of "Mystic Krewe of the Silver Ball" which is a play on traditional Mardi Gras social organizations. And we plan to model the club after a Mardi Gras krewe -- we may even march in a parade during the season.