Kane County Reporter

The board of the Village of Hampshire is considering the development of a gaming cafe in the area, as well as the issue of liquor licenses for the potential business.

Tatiana Rigoni, who currently has a piece of land under contract for sale within the village, presented the concept during the Nov. 17 board meeting. Rigoni wants to create a gaming cafe for patrons 21 and older where beer, wine and snacks would be served. She said the cafe would have camera surveillance and feature six terminals. It would be open from roughly 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. 

“I do believe in Hampshire…that people would be interested in having a gaming cafe,” Rigoni said at the meeting. “Some people are not comfortable going to bars, or they don’t want to go to a truck stop. But my gaming cafe is a very safe place, there’s no loud music, there’s not a lot of drinking, and I believe there’s a lot of people who would be very interested in this type of atmosphere.”

While former area mayors were against this type of establishment, Village President Mike Reid brought the discussion to the board to determine a village wide policy on them. The board members was asked to decide if they want to ban them outright, allow them with a bar liquor license, or create a new classification of liquor license to award to them as they see fit.

The board discussed the benefits of creating a new liquor license type for this business. Creating a new license would allow the village to restrict the cafe to only beer and wine, give it some control over hours of operation and allow it to prohibit anyone under the age of 21 from entering the establishment.

The board decided to pursue creating a new liquor license and said it would grant one to Rigoni if the license is passed by the liquor commission.