WALL – The Lanes at Sea Girt, home during the past 61 years to Hall of Fame bowlers, generations of kids celebrating birthdays and Grateful Dead tribute bands, will close Monday, officials said, a casualty of COVID-19 and rising property values.
Chatham-based Gottesman Real Estate Partners, which owns the Sea Girt Square shopping center next door, bought the property in March for $3 million, records show, and executives said they are looking at either redeveloping or demolishing the building.
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Either way, the deal signals the end for the 26-lane bowling alley.
“This place, I think, is going to be missed by a lot of people,” Jim Daley, 59 of Wall, said one recent evening during a visit to the Lanes to hear the Cosmic Jerry Band. “Even if people don’t have bowling on their mind.”
Story continues after photo gallery below.
The Lanes at Sea Girt on Route 35, owned by Nationwide Bowling Corp. of Jersey City, found success reinventing itself with live music during the past decade, but its closing might not be surprising.
The bowling industry, trying to reverse a decades-long decline in participants, was hit hard by the pandemic. And this stretch of Wall has been attracting investors who haven’t been shy about razing even the most iconic businesses. Namely, the Circus Drive-In was torn down in 2018.
Story continues after photo gallery below.
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Kevin Byrd, a vice president for Gottesman, didn’t rule out the prospect of a bowling alley in the new development, but he said the company envisioned a project that would dovetail with Sea Girt Square, whose tenants include restaurants, a fitness center and a stationary store.
“We are exploring all options,” Byrd said. “What we’re really looking to do is put something that really matches and meets the quality of our shopping center next door and builds on that center and creates one larger shopping center.”
An executive with Nationwide Bowling declined to comment other than to say its sale was partly due to COVID, which forced The Lanes to close from March to September last year, before reopening at reduced capacity.
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Bowling grew with the suburbs
The facility opened here in 1960 as Hyway 35 Lanes, joining a flurry of new bowling alleys in Monmouth and Ocean counties that followed the migration to the suburbs. Its competitors included Bradley Lanes in Bradley Beach and Coast Lanes in Long Branch, both of which were open 24 hours a day.
Joe Emanuele bought into the bowling alley in 1964 and took over full ownership in 1974.
Along the way, the bowling alley catered to families who came for birthday parties and joined bowling leagues, participating in a sport whose top athletes were beginning to gain fame thanks to matches televised Saturdays on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.”
Among the star bowlers was Mark Roth, a Spring Lake Heights resident who frequented Hyway 35.
“There was nothing to do here,” said Sherry Reichey, 53, of Wall, who grew up in Manasquan. “After the summer, it was tumbleweeds. Everybody left. There were, like, 20 who lived here year round. So you would just come here, you know, and make the most of it. And they were always open.”
The bowling alley was showing its age when the Emanuele family gave way to Nationwide Bowling in 1995. The new operator changed the name; fixed the leaky roof; bought a new pin-setting system; installed computerized scoring; and replaced the wood lanes with synthetic lanes.
And it tapped Don Corcione as general manager. Corcione had deep ties to the Shore’s bowling circuit. His father, Fiore, opened the Fort Monmouth Bowling Center in 1968 and rolled a perfect game of 300 in 1979 — a feat noted in the Asbury Park Press.
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The new management set the stage for another generation of bowling. Corcione guided The Lanes through the economic downturn after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the housing bubble’s collapse and superstorm Sandy, all while trying to convince consumers to put down video games and come bowl.
When he started, the idea was: “Keep the place clean, treat the people right and open the door. And you make a living,” Corcione said. “It’s not like that now.”
The Lanes was swimming upstream. Bowling still is considered the top participation sport in the U.S., according to The United States Bowling Congress, a professional group.
But the USBC had 1.2 million members in 2019-2020, down from 4.1 million members, or 70%, from 1997-1998, industry statistics show, a sign that the most passionate bowlers are fading away.
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Corcione changed gears. Taking a cue from Asbury Lanes, a bowling alley and entertainment venue in Asbury Park, he built a stage across the four center lanes and invited Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers tribute bands to perform, eventually featuring live music four nights a week.
The strategy seemed to pay off. The Cosmic Jerry Band began playing at The Lanes and quickly got used to the sound of bowling balls rolling down the lanes on either side, crashing into pins, said drummer Dan Donovan of Brick.
Once The Lanes reopened from COVID with restrictions last September, Donovan’s band returned, playing Grateful Dead tunes once a week and giving a lifeline to fans who had been quarantined by the pandemic.
“It’s going to be definitely sad when it’s gone,” Donovan said. “I mean, they were single handedly keeping the music scene alive down here for a while there. The really bleak days in 2020, that was it. That was the only place to go.”
Wall is changing
Perhaps the bowling alley could have flourished after the pandemic with a steady music lineup and a summer crowd always searching for something to do on a rainy day.
But Wall is changing. Stalwarts like the Circus Drive-In are gone. And the Lanes in its final days had five employees, down from its peak of 25.
“This is just me,” Corcione said. “I think they got an offer they couldn’t refuse. Everything’s got a price, and I think they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse and it was just business.”
The Cosmic Jerry Band was playing Tuesday night with Colts Neck musician Skip Vangelis sitting in. On either side of the stage, people bowled. In front of the sage, people danced.
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For one last moment, Jim Daley’s worlds were colliding.
The author of two books about the Grateful Dead, Daley grew up in Wall and came to the bowling alley with his family every Easter Sunday.
In recent years, he and his father would take drives, with his father pointing out strip malls in town that had been built where there once were trees.
“There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to scratch their heads and say, ‘Oh, and bowling. The bowling lanes are gone,'” Daley said. “It’s considered another casualty of COVID or however you want to look at it. But it’s going to be gone.”
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
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This post was last modified on Tháng mười một 24, 2024 4:37 chiều