The Aurora City Council on Tuesday gave the green light to a downtown arcade that’s looking to expand and combine with a record store.
Yetee Station, which is currently at 11 N. Broadway, and Superjumbo Records, which is currently at 102 E. Galena Blvd., are both moving and joining together to be Superjumbo Records and Arcade. It is set to be located at 55 S. Lake St, which is the building just outside downtown that used to hold the antique store Warehouse 55 before it moved to Batavia last year.
Not only are the two businesses running out of space at their current locations, but the idea was always to make Yetee Station and Superjumbo into a single, cohesive thing, said Mike Mancuso. He owns both businesses and is also the co-owner of TheYetee.com, an e-commerce business also located in Aurora that is known for its daily-changing selection of T-shirt designs.
Specifically, the Aurora City Council voted Tuesday to give the new Superjumbo Records and Arcade a conditional use for Special Purpose Recreational Institution — which is required for the arcade portion of the business to operate.
The conditional use was approved through the Tuesday meeting’s consent agenda, which is typically reserved for routine or non-controversial items that are all approved with a single vote. So, the Aurora City Council did not specifically discuss the item at the meeting.
Once the new location opens, it will be “just a giant, cool place to hang out,” Mancuso previously told The Beacon-News. He said that having both businesses under the same roof, with a lot more space, is a “dream.”
The businesses’ current locations are set to close on May 3, according to Mancuso.
The record store portion of the business should be open within that same week, he has said, but the arcade part will take some extra time because of additional approvals needed from the city.
Although he was reluctant to give a specific timeframe for opening the arcade, Mancuso said he was hoping to have it open in early summer.
Once in the new location, the arcade is expected to have double the amount of games currently available at Yetee Station.
The majority of those games will be “free play” — that is, people pay a daily fee and can play as many games as they want — but more modern games may be coin-operated.
The record store portion of the business will also be growing. Superjumbo used to also have an art gallery and sell movies, things that Mancuso said could come back at the new location.
Plus, Superjumbo has been holding back on things like listening parties and has turned down artists that wanted to do in-store performances because of the limited space, according to Mancuso. But in the new space, he has said, there will be enough room to do things like that.
Mancuso is confident in moving his businesses, although he said that it is always a scary process.
Not only are the businesses doing well, but they also come from a personal place for Mancuso. He previously said that record stores and arcades were some of his favorite places, but they’ve sort of disappeared, so he wanted to bring them back.
Plus, he always wanted to work in a record store, and he personally collects arcade games. The new Superjumbo Records and Arcade is expected to hold nearly all the arcade games he’s collected over more than 10 years.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
