Bar arcade concept Transmission shifting into high gear

Listen to this article

Cam Powell’s vision doesn’t yet have a home, but it does have quite a bit of buzz.

Powell, an area entrepreneur and 2014 journalism graduate of the University of South Carolina, along with business partner and local videographer Josh Rainwater, are bringing an arcade bar to Columbia. They’ve been shopping for a location for their concept, called Transmission, for more than year, but in the meantime, various pop-up events have been pulling in pinball aficionados curious to learn more.

First approached by Rainwater about the concept around two years ago while working on a brick-and-mortar bottle shop concept for West Columbia, Powell was instantly intrigued.

“I thought back to the first time that I ever went to an arcade bar at Boxcar (Bar + Arcade) in Raleigh, and I remember leaving there thinking, ‘Wow, something like this would be really cool in Columbia,’ ” said Powell, whose previous startup experience includes Columbia Brew Bus, which takes patrons on tours of local breweries and distilleries. “It’s a growing city along the same lines.”

The pair, along with a third investor with a background in civil engineering, want to locate in one of Columbia’s hotspots: the Vista, the Main Street district, Five Points or Cottontown. Powell said two properties, including one in Five Points, are currently under serious consideration. Depending on the number of construction permits needed, once a location is secured, Powell hopes to be open by the end of 2019.

In the meantime, he’s been buying games — pinball machines, racing games, arcade cabinet games that include 80s staples such as Centipede, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, etc. He’s on the hunt for a first-person shooter game, he said, scouring auctions throughout the Southeast and Craigslist ads.

“Once we started garnering some investment and had enough money to do things with, after we kept looking at buildings and just not finding what we really wanted, we decided to start building up our games collection,” Powell said. “Our plan is to eventually get to 30-plus, including pinball, arcade cabinets, Skee-Ball, all of that.”

The 19 games he’s acquired so far are stored in a unit in Northeast Columbia, where friends have enjoyed giving them a go. But recently, they’ve been making more accessible appearances as part of a pop-up publicity tour.

Earlier this year, dozens of people packed Devine Street craft beer and bottle shop Craft and Draft to take a turn at pinball machines featuring Jurassic Park dinosaurs and medieval knights. On March 28, a selection of Transmission’s games helped kick off Columbia’s 13th annual Indie Grits Film Fest, drawing crowds of elementary and college students to a vacant storefront on Taylor Street.

“Of course we want barcades in Columbia, because people love video games,” Indie Grits Lab director Seth Gadsden said.

The annual Indie Grits independent film and art festival features Indie Bits, a celebration of independent Southeastern independent interactive media now in its sixth year. Co-director Cecil Decker said Transmission developers have been receptive to the idea of highlighting independent games featuring a wide range of subjects, from an interactive game dealing with racism to “a game where you make a cat dance,” Decker said, indicating the latter on a computer screen as a handful of people tried their hand at pinball and Galaga.

“I’ve been talking to them about incorporating independent games,” Decker said. “They are very open to trying some stuff out.”

Once Transmission finds a permanent location, Powell wants it to be a distinctive one.

“It’s very easy to set up a room and just decorate it with grab-bag nostalgia, with like video game character murals on the walls,” Powell said. “Some of those can be really cool. I’ve seen some really interesting ones, but at the same time, that’s not exactly what we want to do. We want to do something that is representative of Columbia a little bit more. We’d like to work with local artists.

“We want a space that is inviting, but at the same time, not what you would expect.”

Initially, Transmission will include 12 rotating beer taps and 20 to 30 bottle or can offerings, Powell said, along with a wine bar. Expansion could include a kitchen and food service.

“We’re trying to keep startup costs down,” said Powell, who said the concept has received exclusively private investment so far. “We’re not operating on a shoestring budget, but we are a startup. We’re not rolling in cash by any means.”

The Five Points space currently being considered is 2,750 square feet, Powell said. He said Transmission could be as small as 2,500 or as large as 4,500 square feet.

The name Transmission came from a building in Cottontown the bar arcade investors looked at, Powell said.

“It was an old transmission shop called Dave’s Transmission,” he said. “We were like, ‘That’s already there. It’s kind of a cool name. What if we just left it at that? It would be like an homage to the area.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but none of us are Dave.’ So we dropped Dave. We thought about a handful of different names, and that one ended up sticking.”

Powell has also visited bar arcades in Atlanta, New York and San Diego as he hones his idea for a Columbia incarnation.

“This is a brand-new entertainment concept for the city of Columbia,” Powell said. “We have been to enough of these in other places to decide what we liked and didn’t like. What we want to put together is the best representation of what one of these can be for the city of Columbia.”