Fans of Marvin's pinball museum pack meeting to fight plans for demolition

They came in wheelchairs carrying oxygen tanks. They came from surrounding communities. They came with passionate pleas.

Hundreds of supporters showed up in Farmington Hills Thursday night for a planning meeting that was to hold a vote to either keep or tear down the historic Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum in exchange for a Meijer.

“I beg of you to take time to think this over, “ said Farmington resident, Joseph Nosnow, from his wheelchair. "We got one Marvin's and Marvin's has to stay."

In the end, the vote passed, although the development plan still requires the approval of the Farmington Hills City Council. The vote came shortly after 10:30 p.m.

The public meeting drew museum fans from across Michigan recalling memories of the suburban fantasy land and begging for its keep.

By Thursday afternoon, just hours before the meeting, a petition started on change.org: Save Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum had close to 25,000 signatures.

More: Marvin's Museum, a Farmington Hills mainstay, fighting plan to replace it with a Meijer

Close to 300 people watched the meeting virtually while what appeared to be a full house sat inside the Farmington Hills City Hall, according to city officials, with an overflow in the corridor. Many supporters chimed in on the Farmington Hills YouTube page chanting “Keep Marvin’s.”

The new development of the Grand Rapids Big Box store, which is slated to go in the shopping center where the museum currently sits, faces opposition due to supporters believing that a major corporation is yet again pushing out a unique and local establishment.

The plan for the new Meijer and shopping center build was introduced first at the meeting by developers.

While developers did not name Marvin’s Magical Mechanical Museum as a potential building to be demolished, the layout of the plan presented at Thursday's meeting indicates the museum would be a part of one of the buildings to be torn down. The developer did, however, go on record stating they would not be moving the museum out of the shopping center and would offer it a space inside the plaza if it were to be torn down.

This is not the first time the museum has faced the possibility of closing its doors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was closed to the public and was struggling to survive. The arcade was not slated to open again until phase 5 of Governor Whitmer’s coronavirus plans, and so to keep up with the expenses of the free admission museum, full of controlled chaos, antique collections, and coin-operated machines, the company started a Go Fund Me page.

Jeremy Yagoda, who took over the museum after his father and original founder, Marvin Yagoda, died in 2017, was not present at the meeting Thursday. He posted to the museum's Facebook page that if he is forced to close his doors, he will be looking elsewhere to continue the museum's legacy.

“I am fighting tooth and nail every step of the way,” Yagoda said on Facebook. "If we can't work something out here, I will be looking for other options."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Farmington panel weighs fate of Marvin's pinball museum