Just a quick update for those of you who are interested. In order to open shop there are a few requirements. You need to acquire a business permit which is granted by the city's "planning division" and allows you to run whatever type of business you applied for. These permits are attached to a specific address and once approved are stuck to that address. For this reason I have been paying the lease on our location since September due to the fact that a permit for "arcades" is no longer being issued so we had a cut off time to make this happen. After receiving a business permit you must then apply for a business license which is granted by the "building division" once they see your plans and layout you have for location. This step is much more complicated than people think and this is where a lot of time and money has been exhausted. You must hire an architect to draw up these plans and the costs for this is kind of ridiculous. After paying the architect you must now hire engineers that will then put their stamp of approval on these plans and guess what? Each engineer charges for placing their stamp on our drawing. We needed an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a plumbing engineer to overlook, approve, and then stamp our drawings. We also had to pay for "title 24" work to be done along with making sure everything is ADA compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act).
This has been a complete nightmare for me as I have literally done everything I can which includes hiring a second architect to push things along faster. I understand people are itchy to get back to attending Super Arcade and trust me when I say no one wants this to happen sooner than me. Each review has taken so much time and the funny part of all this is that by law, the planners can take 30-45 days to review each correction. Fortunately this is not the case and each review has never taken anything close to that. So to sum it up, I am still waiting on final approvals from the city for our plans so my construction team can finally finish up everything. Once construction begins the shop will be open in less than a month. Everything needed to open has already been purchased long ago including new monitors, set ups, etc etc etc. Some details have been left out cause I do not want to offend anyone as I do not know who might be reading this, but I can promise you that I have been extremely polite and courteous to all the city officials during this entire process. So now I am just sitting here as anxious as anyone to get back to doing what I love. Thanks for reading and hope that sums things up.
