Page 4 - BusinessWest May 11, 2026

Creating Community
Amherst’s Mill District Continues to Evolve
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
renewable energy business when,
in her words, she “picked up pinball
Amy McDonough was working in the
again” after putting it down following
graduate school at the University of
Vermont.
“I couldn’t get pinball off my brain, and I started
picking up pinball machines here and there,” she
told BusinessWest, adding that she would eventually
amass a collection of nearly 70 machines. “And then,
I was thinking about pinball much more than I was
renewable energy.”
This thinking soon became serious in nature, and
it led to an entrepreneurial venture called the Tilted
Orbit Arcade, with that name borrowing two terms
from the pinball world — orbit, which refers to the
path for the ball along the outer rim of the game, and
tilt, of course is when the machine is tilted or shaken
beyond an acceptable level and the game ends.
Due to open in the fall, the arcade will feature
many machines from McDonough’s collection, as
well as a golf simulator, a few vintage ’80s video
games, a kitchen, and bar. It is being designed to
attract many different constituencies, including fami-
lies, area college students, teens, and the Boomers
who discovered pinball in the ’60s and ‘70s, and
then put it down.
At right, Cinda Jones, architect of the Mill District.
Above, Amy McDonough with one of the more than
70 pinball machines she’s collected.
Staff Photo
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MAY 11, 2026
Business W est