Downtown McLean has a hardware store, a post office, a water tower—and an uncommon number of arcades. And the arcade-per-capita quotient in the town of 750 people is about to get even bigger as the vintage video game mecca Arcadia looks to expand — again.
“As long as God gives me breath, I’m going to keep adding arcade attractions to McLean until I either die, or it’s a complete arcade city,” said Arcadia owner John Yates.
He is well on his way. Arcadia Unlimited will eventually open in the building he's used as a warehouse for 30 years.
“That’s one of the problems with restoring it,” Yates said of the building's current use. “It’s got like 800 games in it. It’s kind of hard to renovate a building full of equipment.”
Yates hopes Arcadia Unlimited, which will be McLean's fourth storefront dedicated exclusively to arcades, will be open by the end of the year.
But Arcadia Unlimited will be different from the others.
“Right now, we are like a traditional arcade where you come in and you drop quarters in games,” Yates said. “Almost every other classic arcade in the country is operated where you pay a fee at the door, and then everything’s on free play. I have avoided that up until now, even though those are far more lucrative and better for the owners."
Arcadia Unlimited adds a “yes/and” approach to Yates’ business, giving a fee-based, unlimited play option for those who want it, and coin-operated pay-per-play at Arcadia for those who prefer to go “old school.”
“I don’t want to ruin what I’ve got here,” he said. “When people come down, they’ll have a choice.”
Why he does it
Yates’ obsession with arcade games is multifaceted. The most ephemeral part is about chasing his childhood.
“I grew up playing Monopoly as a kid and I’ve always been an entrepreneur,” Yates said. “It just seemed like this brilliant way to make money without doing much work. And infinitely scalable, too.”
Return on investment in the arcade business dried up decades ago — the bulk of Yates' income comes from buying, restoring and selling classic games.
And he loves the hunt.
“I go out all over the Midwest and further, and go through barns, and warehouses, and basements looking for old, vintage games,” Yates said. “Of course, that’s kind of dried up, too.”
A trained electrical engineer, Yates also loves plugging in a game for the first time — the less salvageable the better — and figuring out how to get it to work.
Setting in McLean?
“It definitely didn’t,” Yates said. “That’s gotta be a God’s will kind of thing.”
A Bloomington-Normal native, Yates settled in McLean in the 1990s with his wife. The original Arcadia near the post office was his way to consolidate his seven-ish storage units rented to store his games.
“As soon as I got here, I really fell in love with the town,” said Yates. “People are nice. You wave and smile and say hi to everybody. Everybody’s your friend."
"Illinois is filled with these ghost towns; they’re bedroom communities and the houses are all fixed up nice, but the downtowns are falling to shambles because there’s no way to operate a viable business in them.”
Given the choice between shambles and a pinball paradise, Yates chose the latter. But nearly all his business comes from outside McLean.
“I never opened this place for the kids of McLean,” said Yates. “The kids in these little towns have no interest in coming into my arcade. They don’t have any money; they’ve got better games on their phones.”
It’s also not about the money.
“I’ve got a family. I’m real active in my church. I want to have the freedom to go where I want to go, when I want to go, and do what I want to do. I’m just living the way that I enjoy.”
