Arcadia National Bar Moving to Former Port City Music Hall Space

It was very sad news back in July of 2020 when it was announced that Port City Music Hall on Congress Street in Portland would be closing its doors for good, but now another Portland business just around the corner is making the move to the former Port City space, and needs some help to get it done.

Arcadia National Bar on Preble Street has remained closed during the pandemic and owner Dave Aceto has managed to ride the storm and keep the bills paid enough to save the business. It hasn't been easy though.

Before COVID, the bar was busy nearly every night with patrons having a few drinks, enjoying delicious food, playing arcade games, pinball, Skee-Ball and tabletop games through the night. If you were at Arcadia for an evening, it was always a blast. But adapting an arcade/bar to comply with state requirements during the pandemic is a tough mountain to climb.

Despite a renovation that nearly doubled its original size, the Arcadia space on Preble Street isn't big enough to have people in it socially distanced. How can you play a four player game of pinball if all the players have to socially distance in such a small space? Eating food at Arcadia isn't a seated affair. It was designed to have people moving around while taking bites while waiting for their turn on the Deadpool pinball machine. Dave realized the solution was right up the street.

Port City Music Hall was a very popular music venue that ended up being just one of many businesses that was unable to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the ability to have live shows with packed houses like they had in the past, there just wasn't enough cash flowing to keep going. Last fall, Dave decided the best way to keep Arcadia going was to move into Port City's former space at 504 Congress Street.

The space is secured, but Arcadia could use some help from the community to keep the ball rolling, so a GoFundMe has been started to raise $40,000 to make the move.

"Port City Music Hall, is the fit we are looking for," Dave wrote on the GoFundMe page. "It will take a few months to get ready, to make the space our own and to bring in games/equipment/etc. but we believe this is the way to keep Arcadia going in a pandemic and come out the other side."

The new space will not only have more arcade games and pinball, there will be enough space for performances, art shows and parties.

To help kickoff the GoFundMe, a video was produced at the current Arcadia location. Dave's in just his underwear for part of this video, but the regulars of Arcadia that know Dave well, know that that's just Dave and is just what they expect.