NEWS

Arcade/bar to occupy former Free Press building

Elizabeth Murray
Free Press Staff Writer
The Archives, an arcade and bar, will be open to adults only and expects to employ 10 to 15 people within the first year of business, its owners say.

The former home to the Burlington Free Press is about to get a new tenant as Burlington's Department of Planning and Zoning recently approved a zoning permit for an arcade and bar to take part of the space.

The establishment, fittingly dubbed "The Archives," is targeted to open on May 1, said Matthew Walters, one of the four owners. It has been approved to occupy 2,020 square feet of the first floor at 191 College Street.

Walters said he and the other three owners, Matthew Strauss, Nathan Beaman and Adam Lukens, came up with the idea for an arcade and bar in Burlington while attending Burlington College together.

The owners were inspired after seeing the success of a similar establishment in Brooklyn, N.Y., called Barcade, Walters said. Over the past three years, the men have been searching for the perfect downtown Burlington location — and they finally found it recently.

"The former Free Press building just has it all, really," Walters said. "It's a maze of new and old buildings that have all been sort of joined together."

The former home to the Burlington Free Press, 191 College Street.

Walters said the focus of The Archives will be on a variety of classic arcade and pinball games, such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, and on craft beer, mostly from Vermont. The establishment will also serve wine, cocktails and farm-to-table snacks, such as artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, he said.

"It's sort of been a combination of people just talking and really loving the concept," Walters said. "I don't know if you'd just call us a bunch of geeks who love beer ... It's been a long process, and hopefully we're getting to that point where it's really going to start to come together and be great."

The arcade and bar will be open to adults only, Walters said. According to zoning documents, owners of The Archives plan to employ 10 to 15 people within the first year of business.

The approval for the arcade and bar was made official on Dec. 12 by the city's Planning and Zoning Department, according to zoning documents. The set of buildings is currently owned by the Handy family, operating as The Great Cedars, LLC.

The Handy family has said it plans to covert the space at 191 College street to a mix of shops, apartments and office space. Attempts to reach the Handy family were unsuccessful on Sunday.

Gannett Co. Inc., the owners of the Burlington Free Press, had sold seven College Street buildings to the Handy family in Sept. 2013 before the newspaper moved to its current location on the seventh floor of 100 Bank Street. The Free Press had operated out of the College Street location for 187 years. The Free Press still owns five buildings on South Winooski Avenue, where its packaging center and printing press are housed.

Walters said The Archives' owners still have more progress to be made, but they hope to open the bar and arcade by May 1, 2015, if construction plans permit. On the owners' to-do list: working to track down some of the classic arcade games on their list.

"We're also in the process now of seeing where the actual building is at in terms of water issues and any other health requirements," Walters said. "There's a lot of things that need to be done in terms of structure for construction, so there are a few things that need to be worked out still."

The owners are excited to open downtown, especially since no establishment like The Archives currently exists in downtown Burlington, Walters said. A similar establishment, Tilt, opened this year in South Burlington.

"It's a great hybrid of something that's missing in Burlington," Walters said.

Plans for The Archives, for which zoning has been approved on the first floor of the former Burlington Free Press building at 191 College St.

Contact Elizabeth Murray at 651-4835 or emurray@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/LizMurraySMC.