I had been considering opening an arcade and trying to make it work in north america. I have been working on a business plan, the main issue for me is capital.
so when the new pinball place opened this year I was following it. Turns out it got shut down for conflicting with 2 zoning bylaws, one is unrelated to arcades (the restaurant itself is not allowed to be at that location), however the other is wierd and is related to arcades.
Apparently, if you have a restaurant in Toronto. you’re not allowed to have more than two “pinball or other mechanical or electronic game machines”
Looks like my dream business got a bit more complicated… there has got to be a way around this, arcades, on their own, is tough to make viable these days…
The zoning bylaw that apparently restricts arcade machines is here
http://trinitybellwoods.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/City-of-Toronto-Zoning-By-Law-438-86-Volume-1-Cover-Table-of-Contents.pdf
Unfortunately I couldn’t find the passage because I couldn’t Ctrl+F anything related to pinball, electronic, game, etc… Couldn’t find anything skimming the table of contents either…
edit: crap, that link i gave is the table of contents… Lost the actual document… give me a moment…
http://trinitybellwoods.org/resources/library/city-of-toronto-plans-studies/ There it is. I’ll have to go over it in detail when I have time… Seems most likely will probably be under mixed use or something…