T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY - A game of Magic: The Gathering unfolds during the final day of operations at Game Haven on Saturday afternoon. Store owner Scott Turner attributed the decision to close to declining revenue after moving out of the Marshalltown Mall earlier this year and his own mental and physical health suffering as a result of the situation.

Scott Turner has always worked at least two jobs since he was a teenager, and for the last three years, he poured his heart and soul into Game Haven, a store he billed as a safe place for customers of all ages, whether they’re players of Magic: The Gathering, Mario Kart or something in between. But after weighing the toll the operation was taking on his mental and physical health — and acknowledging the financial hit he has taken since moving out of the beleaguered Marshalltown Mall back in March — Turner has made the difficult decision to close it and give himself time to catch his breath.

Game Haven’s last day open was Saturday. Since the relocation, it had been located at 204 S. 1st Ave. in the back of a building shared with Remix Dance Studio, another “mall orphan” that moved out after the New York-based ownership group consistently failed to pay its electrical bills until power was shut off in the common areas last November.

Turner, who also works full time at Emerson, announced the impending closure in a video posted to Facebook last month and attributed it primarily to the three aforementioned factors.

“When the power went out (at the mall), our revenue was cut in half instantly, and we just never recovered from it. So I funded it myself, basically, since January, and I just kind of ran out of money,” he said.

He added that the situation led to increased stress levels, and although he had to try to update the inventory stock, the store wasn’t generating enough income to support it. In turn, the new space “doesn’t really look like a retail location,” and the main entrance was through a backdoor in an alleyway.

“We had a hard time directing people to the place, which could’ve been solved with money, but that was just a thing we didn’t have,” Turner said.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the owner’s physical health took a sharp turn for the worse: between September and October, he ended up in the emergency room four times and had two seizures.

“That was kind of the nail in the coffin. When all that stuff started happening, we all just collectively decided ‘Yeah, while the store’s great and it’s good for the community, it’s not worth risking my health over,'” he said.

While he feels that he’s made the right decision, the negative impact of losing another “third place” in Marshalltown where like minded people had the opportunity to congregate and make friends certainly isn’t lost on Turner. One regular, Brecken Gavagan of Marshalltown, shared his thoughts during one of the final Magic games held Saturday and joked that his mom called Game Haven his “home.”

“We’ve created a family here. Everybody here, we all knew by name, and it was just fun to have a place where we could be ourselves,” he said.

Another member of that unofficial family, Seth Anderson, said he drove over from his home in Ames every Friday because he loved the environment.

“This was my one day of the week that I really got out of the house and spent time at a place that wasn’t work or home,” Anderson said. “So I’m really gonna miss this.”

For some of Turner’s customers who fit into the “basement dweller” gamer stereotype, Game Haven was their only opportunity for socialization.

“They started coming to the store, and then they had friends. They were hanging out with people outside of just at Game Haven. We helped a lot of people with their schoolwork, so when they were struggling before, now they’re doing well at school,” he said. “So it’s a big resource to lose because there’s no other place in town where you can just go and hang out. You’ve got the bowling alley, but there isn’t just space where you can sit down and kind of do your own thing. You either have to bowl or play the little arcade games or sit at the bar, and a lot of those people aren’t old enough to sit at the bar.”

Along with the city’s watering holes for those 21 and older, the public library is another gathering place, but it comes with its own restrictions, and while there is another new gaming store in Marshalltown — Artemis Tavern — Turner noted that it closes by 5 p.m. most days. Realistically, he acknowledged that he probably should’ve shut down Game Haven after the mall snafu, but the desire to provide such a space kept him pushing forward regardless.

“Sometimes it just doesn’t happen, and it is what it is,” he said.

Luckily for local gaming fanatics, the community Turner played such a large part in creating won’t be completely disappearing. His assistant, Max Pietrzak, will continue to run the Smash tournaments at Marshalltown Community College (MCC) with the school’s eSports program, and the Game Haven Discord chat remains “active” with regular meet-ups and events currently in the works.

On the personal side, Turner is looking forward to “doing absolutely nothing” for the next six months — relaxing, taking a couple of vacations with his girlfriend, spending time with family and friends and trying to be a normal guy for a while.

“I’ve had two jobs since I was 14, so this is actually gonna be the first time I’ve only had one job in, like, 30 years, so I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all my time. But after my little hiatus is over, I’m fully intending on joining up with some (Dungeons and Dragons) games and seeing if I can get some Magic players together to have some events,” he said. “I’m actually enrolled in college for next year, so I’m currently gonna try out for the eSports team and try to get some scholarship money. While I’m not very good at Smash, I’m pretty decent at Street Fighter.”

He and Pietrzak still talk “every day,” and they very much intend to keep the core group intact even if it isn’t on an in-person basis for the time being. Ray Taton, who regularly drove down to Game Haven with his wife from their home in Eldora, said conversations are ongoing about hosting events and finding other stores with a similar atmosphere, but he knows that will likely entail driving further to Ames, Des Moines or the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area.

“It’s always gonna be hard to find something like this again, even at other shops,” Taton said. “It can be hard to find a place with people of like mindedness who enjoy the same things without being looked down upon by everyone else around us, and losing another space like this just makes it even harder for us to find people who enjoy the things we do without going through several different hoops on the internet that maybe is close enough and maybe you mesh will with. Whereas places like this, you show up, everyone’s here, Tuesday night’s Pokemon, everyone’s here to play Pokemon, and after showing up just a few times, you’ve played with everybody and you find the people you enjoy playing with. And the same thing goes for Magic… You find out the people you enjoy playing with and those who are really helpful in everything, and it’s just hard to find that now.”

Although it may be “game over” for the store that first opened almost exactly three years ago in November of 2021, Turner hopes those who enjoyed Game Haven will remember it as a safe place where lifelong bonds were forged and people were accepted for being themselves.

“It didn’t matter who you were. We always smiled and said ‘Hey’ at the door. We made a lot of friends, we had a lot of memories. I just hope that people remember that there is a need for some sort of community center for kids and young people — and old people, even — to just be able to congregate and be able to do their own thing with no judgment,” he said. “Maybe someday, somebody else can take up that mantle and do it. It’ll never be Game Haven, but it can be something great for the community.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.