4 | FEBRUARY 18 - 24, 2022 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
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Blockopoly game brings Worcester streets to life Liz Fay Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
In 2009, Brian Njuguna opened the doors to his empty Worcester apartment after spending a year in Africa with his mother, owning nothing but a bed, a sofa and a Monopoly board. “I was a huge fan of the game,” says Njuguna, who said it inspired his interest in real estate. He had, prior to relocating to Kenya, been invested in four three-deckers in Worcester. His life had already been a whirlwind at that point, from moving to the United States at the age of 10, to owning a store in the Greendale Mall while he was still a student at Burncoat High School, to dabbling in the music industry, his life had already been a wild ride, and indeed, for a moment, he thought he had done all he could from Worcester, and it was time to move on. “I felt like I had done everything,” he said. “Mom gave me ideas to go back to Africa and see what we could do. Mom never wanted to retire in America. She wanted to go back to Africa, so that was what I was working toward.” That didn’t work out, and he returned to America while his mother remained home. He was broke, and his credit was ruined, but then the Monopoly game inspired him again: “I was not relating to the board,” he said and he realized he wanted to “build my own type of board game, one that could fi t our community.” The result was “Blockopoly,” a hip-hop alternative to Monopoly for players 18 and older, or as Njuguna calls it, “streets
WORCESTER - Custom board game maker Brian Ngaguna with his Blockopoly game. ALLAN JUNG/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
in a box” — inspired by his own real-life experiences. The game would become a reality in 2016, even as his life and fortunes continued to change.
A Mind for Business Njuguna developed a keen eye for entrepreneurship and marketing in his youth, and by the age of 17, he opened his fi rst business, Ballaz, a retail cloth-
ing store located inside the former Greendale Mall. The store actually evolved from his interest in music, when he and fellow Burncoat graduate David Saint Fleur would travel to New York to meet with record labels. “That’s where I got the idea to start bringing stuff up,” says Njuguna. The result was his opening Ballaz, which started with nothing and was driven largely by Njuguna’s ambition,
charisma and willpower. He closed his fi rst year of business profi ting $80,000, he said, only to end up selling his store soon after, using the profi t as a seed money to start his next career. “I bought my fi rst real estate,” he says, “I think it was 19. I bought my mom her fi rst house.” He had also kept a foot in the music world, utilizing his industry connections to quickly
become a top-selling promoter, working with multiple renowned hip-hop acts ranging from Dipset, Trey Songz and Jim Jones at venues such as Worcester’s DCU Center and Palladium . It was around the time of the Songz concert at The Hanover Theatre when he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. See BLOCKOPOLY, Page 5
