Great Lakes Gaming provides ‘country club’ for gamers

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There was a time when Ben Garvey envisioned himself doing something in golf as a career.

He had worked at Gowanda Country Club, not far from his home in the Erie County hamlet of Derby, and also spent 14 months as an employee of the pro shop at Locust Hill Country Club while attending Rochester Institute of Technology.

But he left golf behind, deciding instead to follow his passion. A 2021 RIT graduate, Garvey has created what he terms a country club for gamers.

Great Lakes Gaming on Wednesday launched what Garvey hopes is just the first of a series of gaming lounges. Equipped with high-end gaming consoles, Great Lakes Gaming Lounge sits high above Rochester on the 22nd floor of Innovation Square.

The lounge occupies 3,400 square feet and includes 12 PC stations, two private gaming booths and three couch console setups, and tournaments will be a regular happening. Membership is $100 a month but there is an early sign-up special (three months for $100).

The location in Innovation Square — Gallina Development’s re-creation of the Xerox tower — is perfect, since tech and creativity are the focus of the project.

“I really like what the Gallinas are doing, converting this behemoth of a building into something Rochester has never seen,” Garvey, 23, said.

He is trying to do the same thing with the gaming lounge, which was conceptualized in the fall of 2019. He actually was hoping to get into the game design program at RIT but decided the gaming business made more sense — and perhaps dollars and cents.

Garvey’s own failures as a gamer actually helped spark the idea for the lounge concept.

“I was on the Call to Duty team at RIT (in 2018) and our first season playing together we were terrible,” he said. “We asked for access to the computer lab and we started playing better.”

In-person gaming just created better focus and a better atmosphere, he said.

“When you’re a member of a country club, you’re going to meet some friendly people that make it enjoyable,” Garvey said. “That’s what I want to bring over to gaming. I feel it needs some structure and professionalism.”

The location at Innovation Square means his target audience is just a staircase or quick elevator ride away, since upper level students from local colleges and universities occupy much of the residential space. The lounge also is conveniently located for the younger tech entrepreneurs and employees of  tech startups working downtown.

Garvey said financial support from his grandparents allowed him to launch his venture, and his long-term plan includes a satellite facility downtown, with expansion to Buffalo and Cleveland, and, ideally, Chicago, Milwaukee and sites on the Canadian sides of the Great Lakes.

For more information, visit the company website.

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