New owner wants Manitou’s Penny Arcade to be a year-round destination with fab prizes

A few months after he bought the nearly 100-year-old Penny Arcade in Manitou Springs, serial entrepreneur John Weiss was crowd-sourcing ideas to ensure the Arcade remains a "tremendous resource" for the city while preserving its traditional character.

That could be described as the ambiance of a British seaside town minus the soft ice cream with a Cadbury's Flake shoved in the top of the swirl, coupled with Coney Island-sized crowds in the summer - although Weiss would like to change mindsets and get people to think of Manitou and the Arcade as year-round destinations.

One of the suggestions from the scores of people who attended the two days of brainstorming on the last weekend in June was to keep the old games and turn part of the Arcade, which first opened in 1933, into "a kind of museum," Weiss said.

Also, get more games where people play against someone else, the crowd suggested.

Build a small stage and hire local musicians to do gigs, they pitched.

And instead of giving out cheap throw-away prizes in exchange for the paper tickets that Arcade players amass, promote local businesses by offering, say, a money-off voucher for the Queen's Parlour Tea Room at Miramont Castle, a treat at the Colorado Custard Company, or a sewing class at the Manitou Art Center - all of which this reporter would be delighted to win.

"We're spending $200,000 on junk from China," Weiss told the brainstorming group at the Manitou Art Center on Saturday. "What can we do to bring some of that money here?"

Much to fix

To improve the Arcade experience - and increase awareness of its existence - Weiss and his team have "more than doubled the marketing and advertising budget," he said.

They did that by spending $400 to build a website, illustrating the extent to which the Arcade has historically just trundled along.

Another issue to address is that, on any given day, several games and kids' rides are out of order.

Weiss is also gathering suggestions on improving conditions for the Arcade's 37 employees - things like paying them more, and a suggestion from a staffer called Stratton, giving them a break room with windows. Another employee said, "Air conditioning would be good," as guests wiped beads of sweat from their foreheads and nodded in agreement.

Weiss's goal is to have the fixes and revamping done by next April.

"But everything takes more time than you budget for, and right now we're just trying to keep the Arcade open," he said.

"We just bought, I think, four million tickets because running out of tickets, which they've done once, I believe, in the past 90 years, is really bad.

"I don't want to be the owner who ran out of tickets, you know what I mean?"

'I could go to Manitou'

Despite its failings, the games and rides down an alleyway off Manitou Ave. by Patsy's Candy and Gift Shop draw a crush of visitors in the summertime - 5,000-8,000 a week in the summer, according to Weiss - and the Arcade turns a profit.

But those numbers drop as low as 1,000 visitors in the winter months, and 2,000-4,000 a month in the spring and fall shoulder seasons, Weiss said.

He'd like to see those numbers even out over the year.

For instance, if just 1% of El Paso County's 744,000 residents decided to visit Manitou in October or November instead of going somewhere else, "That would be huge," he said.

And that's not counting out-of-state or -county visitors.

"There has to be a way that we can get people to come here and taste the experience of Manitou," Weiss said.

He's still trying to figure out what that is, but thinks part of the solution involves changing mindsets.

So when a family in Falcon or people in Pueblo are mulling where to go on a rainy day (or a sunny one, for that matter), they would think, "I could go to Manitou," play some of the Arcade's 450 games and maybe win fabulous prizes - not necessarily cheap stuff from China.

John Weiss is a financial supporter of the Pikes Peak Bulletin.