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Dave & Buster’s Grows Closer To Little Rock Landing

2 min read

Little Rock appears to be growing closer to getting a Dave & Buster’s, the restaurant-arcade chain that originated in the city.

During the legislative session, state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson of Little Rock sponsored a bill to attract the chain, based in Dallas, to Arkansas.

That measure, approved by the Legislature as Act 1209, raised the cap on how much a player of arcade games can win. State law had capped the prize at 10 times what it cost to play the game or $5, whichever was less. In a game in which a player wins multiple tickets, the value of the prize was limited to $12.50. Hutchinson’s bill increased that cap to $500, a sum that accommodates the PlayStation, Wii and Xbox video game systems Dave & Buster’s sometimes bestows as prizes.

The law was closely drafted to apply only to facilities in Arkansas that met the following criteria: of more than 25,000 SF, with a full-service restaurant, offering at least 100 “amusement devices” and located in a county that has a population over 350,000 and with a navigable river — Pulaski County, in other words.

Our source indicated last week that Dave & Buster’s was within six months of opening in Little Rock, while another confirmed that the chain was looking at the Gateway Town Center at the intersection of Interstate 30 and I-430. The popular 120,000-SF Bass Pro Shop is one component of the center, and the 325,000-SF Outlets at Little Rock, scheduled to open in October, is another.

A Dave & Buster’s representative didn’t return a call for comment.

Dave & Buster’s has more than 70 locations throughout the United States as well as one in Toronto. The company reported revenue in 2014 of $746.8 million, a 17.5 percent increase from $635.6 million in 2013.

Dave & Buster’s evolved from a combination of Buster’s, a watering hole in the old Union Station building in Little Rock that was popular in the 1970s and ‘80s, and Slick Willy’s World of Entertainment next door. Buster’s and Slick Willy’s are no more, but the first Dave & Buster’s debuted in Dallas in 1982. The Little Rock location would be the first Dave & Buster’s in Arkansas.

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