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Brewery Expands With HUGE Collection of Top 100 Pinball, Barcade in Full Effect

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When owner of One Well Brewing, Chris O’Neill, decided to take the expansion plunge, he had a magical idea. He always had a soft spot for the top 100 classic arcade machines. While planning his “barcade” brewery, and buying out the entire strip mall, he went full on “pinball wizard” and snapped up a private collection of the best. There’s something about the feel of playing an authentic mechanical pinball machine which can never be captured by any of the digital gaming equivalents or options.

Brewery conjures fun

To celebrate the 7th birthday of the successful local brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Milwood neighborhood, O’Neill conjured up an amazing range of enhanced entertainment options. The Wizard’s Pinball Palace will officially open Friday, November 26 with “dozens of additional pinball machines.”

They already provided patrons with “countess card games and board games,” as well as standard pub favorites like darts. Chris is as excited as a child that “all but five of the machines are considered among the Top 100 pinball machines made.” Dating back to the 1990’s, about two dozen “were just acquired from a private collection north of Kalamazoo.”

When O’Neill opened his brewery seven years ago, he never imagined “it was going to be an arcade.” He’s not surprised though.

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“I always liked that ‘barcade’ feel with the board games that we started off.” He even scored a Wizard robe for a press interview. “So, now I’m just a wizard grinning ear to ear about everything that’s happening here.”

A lot of space

Chris explains that he never could have brought the public this extensive a selection without the extra space.

By buying the entire strip mall he added a “5,500 square foot room that will be home to all 50 of the brewery’s pinball machines as well as 20 classic arcade games, three pool tables, two foosball tables and an air hockey table.”

The project will bring his total brewery operation up to 13,500 square feet of interior space and “increase the venue’s capacity from 320 to 412 people.” They’re turning their grand re-opening into a huge celebration. He’s just happy that the town survived Covid. They’re family friendly but they have limits.

“This is not going to be a high school hangout after school,” O’Neill emphasized. “This is a bar and this is still part of the bar. It’s a continuation of what we are doing. We love families. We love all ages of people, but what we don’t love is unsupervised children. There’s too many things that can go wrong.”

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“It’s a celebration of making it through COVID, of still being here,” the brewery wizard beamed.

“It’s a celebration of our employees that have stuck with us and continue to make this business a great business. It’s the celebration of our customers that come in every day, every week, every month and support this. It’s a celebration of all of those things, because that’s what makes One Well, One Well, it’s the day to day stuff.”

What do you think?

Written by Mark Megahan

Mark Megahan is a resident of Morristown, Arizona and aficionado of the finer things in life.

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