Four NBA Hoops game cabinets arrived at Sol’s Arcade + Taproom in downtown Fayetteville at the end of April, around 10 months later than planned. 

Nearby, a partly finished wall waited for plumbing and equipment to be installed between the metal studs for self-serve beer taps. Also around 10 months behind schedule. 

Across the room, another attraction, a shooting range simulator with two wall-sized screens was finished. One screen played a cartoon pirate game play, while another flashed animated targets. Patrons will use modified but real 9 mm pistols to “shoot” the pirates and targets. 

Sol’s owner Cameron Carlotti plans to have customers sipping beers, rolling skeeballs, playing air hockey, shooting hoops, pirates and targets, and playing other arcade games in Fayetteville’s newest arcade bar in July. 

He had aimed to open in August 2024. And August 2024 was later than he had originally planned. In September 2023, Carlotti told The Fayetteville Observer he hoped to be open in February 2024. 

“So it’s just been one battle or barrier after another,” Carlotti told CityView in April. “That just makes the finish line that much sweeter.” 

Sol’s (rhymes with souls) is at 421 Maiden Lane, across from Segra Stadium in the former Advanced Internet Technologies building. Carlotti named his bar arcade after the dog that he and his wife, Morghan, adopted. Sol’s face is now on a large outdoor mural. 

The business was born out of adversity. And adversity has bedeviled it since its inception. 

Entrepreneur to soldier to entrepreneur 

Five years ago Carlotti operated a fitness gym and was a personal trainer and nutritionist in Eureka, California, he said. 

Then, he said, he “got the military itch” and joined the Army to become an engineer in the Special Forces. 

His military career was cut short in a training accident at Fort Bragg in April 2022. A Humvee Carlotti was riding in went out of control and rolled over. One soldier was killed. Three others, including Carlotti, were hurt. 

“I had a torn shoulder, torn calf, slipped disc in my back. I fractured my spine. I had a traumatic brain injury,” he said. The wreck also gave him PTSD, he said, that surfaced with a panic attack months later in another Humvee. 

“I just couldn’t hang it. I thought I was good. Wasn’t good,” Carlotti said. The Army put him in PTSD therapy, but “ultimately they ended up deciding the best decision was to medically retire me.” 

As Carlotti transitioned back to the civilian world, he and Morghan decided to stay in Fayetteville. 

“So I was like, ‘I’ve got no interest to go anywhere. She likes her job. We just bought a house.’ I was like, ‘Well, I want to open another business,’” he said. 

He looked around the community and looked at demographic data, he said. He concluded the Fayetteville area needs more entertainment options for young people. In August of 2023, he and a silent partner formed Sol’s Barkade LLC, which will do business as Sol’s Arcade + Taproom. 

Sol’s will be a family-oriented entertainment and events venue by day, and cater to adult clientele by night, Carlotti said. Food trucks will provide the food. And Sol’s will be dog friendly, day and night. 

Opening Sol’s has proven far more difficult and expensive than Carlotti expected. 

Delay and delay again 

An early hurdle was access to the space Carlotti intended to lease in the former AIT building. He signed a lease in January 2024, he said, but the previous tenant, Advanced Internet Technologies, was not able to vacate as quickly as it planned. (AIT still occupies part of the building.) 

AIT finished its move in May 2024, Carlotti said, and he thought he could open in August. 

More headwinds emerged. The city office that assesses whether construction projects comply with Fayetteville’s building, design and safety codes repeatedly rejected the design and engineering plans submitted by Carlotti’s engineering and architectural consultant. 

“They gave me 13 pages of violations,” he said. 

The engineering firm took the list, made revisions and resubmitted the plans. They were rejected again, Carlotti said. 

This cycle repeated six times from May 2024 to early 2025, he said. 

Every day of delay added to Sol’s expenses, which Carlotti estimated have reached nearly $500,000 as of late April. And every day of delay was a day of lost potential revenue, which he projects to be $120,000 per month. 

At the sixth cycle, a new problem surfaced: The engineering and architectural consultant that had been designing and revising the plans went out of business. In January, Carlotti was scrambling to find a replacement. 

By this point, the list of problems with the arcade bar’s plans had been knocked down from 13 pages to two items, and a new engineer, Chris Locklear, quickly resolved them to the city’s satisfaction, Carlotti said. 

Since then, the mural of Sol has been painted, the signage installed, the games brought in, and the remodeling continued. Carlotti hopes to open in early July 

He said he has been working 50 to 60 hours a week, and hasn’t had a paycheck in two years. “So the grind of an entrepreneur,” he said. 

Other business owners have told Carlotti, “I wouldn’t take on an ordeal like this,” he said. 

His answer: “I’m gonna die anyway, man. I might as well make something of my life that I can while I can. 

“If it fails and it goes bankrupt? Okay, I fall, I get back up, I make it work. I fall, I get back up, I make it work,” he said. “Like, why are you here, you know, if you’re not going to make the best of it that you can?” 

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at [email protected]. 

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