Pinball players hate the Pinball Hall of Fame

I'm a pinball player, and when I visit Las Vegas, there's one place I make it a priority to visit every single trip, the Pinball Hall of Fame. 

I've written about the Hall of Fame in the past, and I have recommended it countless times.   

I know its story and history, more or less, but let me recount it, as best as I can recall. Don't hold me to having every last detail perfectly accurate. It's late, and I don't feel like trying to research every last tidbit. This is a blog, not the newspaper of record for Clark County.

The Hall of Fame evolved from the massive personal pinball collection of Tim Arnold. Arnold grew up in Minnesota and started making money in the pinball business before he was an adult. He made a lot of money courtesy of the video game industry during the 1980s in Michigan, and purchased a lot of old pinball machines that were gathering dust and taking up space. He was able to retire at a young age and moved to Las Vegas, trucking his massive collection of machines to the desert. 

He started the Hall of Fame by hosting game nights in a pole shed, with local players gathering occasionally. From those game nights came the Hall of Fame, and a dedicated space in a strip mall for more than 100 machines from his massive collection. The first Hall of Fame was a few miles east of the Las Vegas strip on Tropicana Avenue. 

More than 10 years ago the Hall of Fame moved to a standalone building on Tropicana, closer to the strip, but still a couple of miles away. 

The Hall of Fame operates as a nonprofit business, staffed by volunteers. The quarters spent to play pinball pay the bills, and additional revenue is donated to charity. This has been going on for years. 

A few years ago the Hall of Fame announced its most ambitious plan, to set up shop on the Las Vegas strip. Incredibly, profits from the Hall of Fame's operation were set aside for the project, and used to buy a large piece of land on the far south end of the strip, near the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. It's not the heart of the strip, but it's a far more accessible site for tourists on the strip. And the new home of the Hall of Fame is going to blow away its current home, which hosts more than 200 pinball machines. 

The Hall of Fame stopped donating its profits to charity so that it could bankroll the project, both the land acquisition and the construction of a building. Unlike its first two locations, the Hall of Fame will have a brand new building to call home, designed for hosting hundreds of pinball machines and other coin-operated machines of years past. It's going to be an amazing display of American history, ingenuity and creativity. 

The Hall of Fame owns its building on Tropicana Avenue, and an adjacent empty lot. The sale of those will help offset costs for the new project on the strip. But the new project is far more expensive than the value of those parcels, without a doubt. It seemed to me, a guy who doesn't know much about financing a commercial construction project or anything about Las Vegas strip real estate, that the Hall of Fame was rather proactive in financing the project. 

I don't recall the details of the plan when it was first announced, but I thought there was some level of debt that would befinanced in conjunction with this project. The organization is a proven success, however, and I suspect that any debt load wouldn't take decades to pay off. Arnold has stressed that his goal is to resume donating profits to charity.

So, all that said, the project commenced last spring, after the pandemic shuttered Vegas. The project had been in the planning for many months, and the financial pieces were in place, so construction proceeded as planned. 

Here's the well-known wrinkle in all the planning: It was anticipated that the Tropicana Avenue Hall of Fame would continue producing revenue during construction. The pandemic put a big dent in that projected revenue, and recently Arnold initiated a fundraising campaign to make up a deficit of $200,000.  

According to his campaign, the new Hall of Fame is a $10 million project, and will be paid off upon completion. If that's correct, meaning there's no debt to pay off after the fact, my mind is blown. Without a final $200,000, the project won't be completed, he claims. 

The campaign has circulated among pinball players and Vegas nerds for a few weeks now, and as of tonight a little more than $100,000 has been donated. 

I saw yet another mention of the campaign earlier today, with the suggestion the new Hall of Fame might not see completion. I was among the doubters. There's too much invested in the project, and too little to finance, for it to suddenly go belly up.

Some pinball players are happy to donate to the project. Others think the late fundraising campaign is despicable. More than a few. I was a bit surprised. 

I get the vitriol, sort of, regarding Arnold and the Hall of Fame. Folks claim he's a curmudgeon and that he or the volunteers are rude toward visitors who don't follow a very strict, unwritten protocol. This is not new, I've heard this before. Is it a fair representation of the Hall of Fame? Hard for me to say yes, I've been there at least 25 times during the past 13-14 years, and I've never seen it. 

A few people bemoaned the fact that of the Hall of Fame's 200+ machines, there are always machines that are in need of a tune up, if not outright repair. I guess it's easier than I would imagine to maintain dozens of machines that are 40-60 years old, as well as dozens more that are only 20-30 years old, all of which are played 365 days a year. Regardless, the machines do not play as if they're showroom new, so the venue isn't worth supporting, evidently. 

More fascinating than the hatred for a guy whose personal collection is available to play 365 days a year is the financial wizardry and knowledge of many pinball players. Several have concluded that Arnold is a clueless dolt who has mismanaged this project spectacularly. He is $200,000 short, after all, so he must he be an idiot. 

Here I thought a guy who has shepherded the Hall of Fame for more than a decade, banking cash and donating to charity, must be doing something right. If it's a $10 million project, he came up $200,000 short due to the financial hardships of a pandemic that nobody projected, or planned for, two years ago. Foolish me, I'm impressed by what has been accomplished so far. The new building on the strip is nearly complete. 

Other financial geniuses suggested that Arnold foolishly started the project last spring after the pandemic shut down Vegas casinos for more than two months. I don't have a clue what the financial ramifications would have been to suspending the project indefinitely and sitting on the vacant land instead of keeping construction workers employed during the pandemic, but pinball's Mensa members know that Arnold is a financial fool. 

Point of reference: I have seen plenty of construction projects continue, or commence, since the pandemic graced Minnesota with its presence last spring. Why didn't all of those grind to a halt? 

A few financial gurus noted that they have or do run a pinball business, and they don't ask pinball players to donate to their business. Fair enough, although none of them mentioned running their business as a nonprofit or noted how many thousands of dollars they have donated to charity.

If there's anything I question, it's the need to raise $200,000 from the pinball community. Some pinheads wondered why there isn't some sort of corporate sponsorship or other fundraising mechanism to help build an oversized arcade dedicated to preserving the history of pinball. Fair question. 

Arnold isn't interested in amassing debt in order to build a Las Vegas strip Hall of Fame, although it can't be that hard to finance the final $200,000 of construction costs for the project. But it appears he just doesn't want to do it. Building a big new Vegas attraction without a huge debt to pay off? How un-American! 

One way or another, we'll have a new Hall of Fame in Vegas, on the strip, and likely before my next visit to Vegas.

It will attract thousands of tourists per week, if we ever get past the pandemic. Most of those tourists will go home with a smile on their face, having relived their youth or experienced something new, something they never imagined. 

And yet half the pinball community, if Facebook discussions are to be believed, absolutely despise the place.