Has my gaming community ship finally come in?

I've probably bemoaned the lackluster state of the roleplaying community in my town here before. I regularly refer to Wichita as a gaming wasteland.

We've got three comic and game stores that really matter, and usually one or two other marginal ones that don't have substantial inventory or play space, meaning no real reason to visit them. But even our "substantial" stores have been pitiful compared to other cities our size. The game with the most play space has six or seven wargaming tables, and that part of the community does pretty well, but they just didn't have space for roleplaying… you couldn't comfortably have more than a couple games going at a time, noise being one of the biggest factors.

Today, that store moved into its new location. They went from 3000 square feet to 15,000 square feet. It almost feels too big! They're going to have a sandwich and drink bar, an Internet cafe, an arcade, I believe LAN gaming, and positively huge areas dedicated to gaming space, with roleplaying and wargaming having separate spaces on different floors.

I manage the Wichita Roleplayers club, and we try to have semi-regular Game Days, but space has always been a problem. We held our first one at this store in its smaller space and it was just too crowded, but holding them outside of the game store didn't draw a big enough crowd. And then there was the issue of neutrality… if I held events in a game store, the other game stores, understandably, wouldn't let me advertise my club in there.

With the opening of this new store, I've pretty much decided to throw neutrality to the wind and throw in my lot with this giant store. They've always been the most supportive of my club (going out of their way to be supportive), and I think the other stores just became irrelevant to my social network. Agents is going to be the place to be in the gaming community.

I just hope it works out financially for the owner. But for once, this is a game store owned by a successful businessman (a doctor with his own practice) who has the money to invest in it. It's not the usual shoestring budget that most game stores are working on. So I've got my fingers crossed for this one.