“McLean, Illinois, has a population of 750 people and 100 pinball machines.” The tiny Illinois town, 15 miles outside Bloomington-Normal, is experiencing a downtown revival after a pinball collector opened not one but two pinball arcades.
He has also renovated the spaces above his commercial spaces into pinball-themed AirBnB lodgings for pinball fanatics to stay. And yet when one man buys up most of a town, he’s not always popular:
“Yates and his family members are the only people running Pinball Paradise and Arcadia. They don’t have employees, and until the Airbnb business increased during the pandemic, they brought very little in the way of economic impact or tax income to McLean — all while buying up a massive portion of the buildings the town had to offer. Given this, Yates is not without his critics.”