Lincoln Whisler Talks 1984 Arcade

When Lincoln Whisler and Devin Durham shared an office downtown in the early 2000s, they began buying old pinball machines to fill their office. “And then our office started getting really full,” Whisler says.

They began tossing around the idea of leasing some space to hold all their games and recreating a ’80s arcade, not really considering making it a full-fledged business. “When we started looking around for space to lease that had all the things that we wanted, we realized that retail space was the same price as any other space we were looking at,” Whisler recalls. “We came up with the idea of maybe letting the public come in.”

Twenty years later, 1984 still sits on South Jefferson Avenue in downtown Springfield and is run by its seven owners. “This is a partnership,” Whisler says. “Without my friends and family and partners there at ’84, it wouldn’t be here for 20 years.”

In its 19th year, the team finally introduced its first “outside” employee. Even though the arcade started as a passion project, it still has to function as a business. Whisler credits the Durham family for keeping 1984 afloat. “We share the time, and everybody has a role that they have taken on so that we can cover all the things that a business needs to have taken care of,” he says.

Whisler’s full-time job is as the advertising director for Reliable Toyota/Lexus/BMW, which has taught him a lot about business operation, digging into the numbers, looking at details and looking at opportunities. He says if you’re looking for a passion project, you need to make sure it is something you really love because transparently, owning a business isn’t simple. “If you’re going to be spending your time—which has a lot of value—your personal time better be spent doing something that’s really important,” he says. “Is this a need or want or just a passion? You better make sure it’s the right one so that when it gets tough, you have a really good reason to carry forward.”