Albany Bowl permanently closing
Beloved alley frequented by families, UC students going away after 71 years
ALBANY >> Albany Bowl, one of the city’s oldest and best-loved institutions, is closing forever after 71 years, another business victim of the extended COVID-19 shutdowns.
“(It’s) no rumor — it’s true,” said
John Tierney, who has owned the bowling center since 1985.
“I’m here because we’re starting to empty the offices,” an emotional Tierney said Dec. 19 in the darkened alley. “I had to lay off 40 employees. I called them all individually to tell them.”
With no cash flow to counter overhead for most of the year and no government relief apparently coming soon, the decision was unavoidable.
“Money. And taxes. And government,” Tierney said. “I’ve spent $700,000 out of pocket (since the shutdown), and I can’t keep going that way.”
He cited large chain retailers with deep pockets such as Home Depot, Costco and Walmart that have been allowed to continue reduced operations, while smaller and locally owned businesses have had to remain shut.
Tierney also noted that he had to pay a large tax bill two weeks ago. And for the first few months of the pandemic, he continued to cover the cost of employee health insurance.
“I can’t hold on for six more months,” he said.
Inside the building, he showed plastic partitions between lanes and arcade games, with sanitizer stations placed in numerous locations, all never used.
“I put thousands into safety precautions” in anticipation of safely reopening, Tierney said. “We redid the lanes; we repainted. We’ve had everything ready.”
Albany Bowl opened Aug. 5, 1949, and then, as now, it featured a restaurant, cocktail lounge (now called Tierney’s Sports Bar), a billiard room and a large parking lot to go along with its 36 lanes.
The center since has weathered the rise of larger suburban facilities and a decline in the popularity of bowling in general, staying a favorite place for leagues, birthday parties, fundraisers and corporate events. It has modernized with the latest scoring equipment
and 10-foot screens at each lane. The center’s mascot, Mr. Pin, an employee dressed as a large bowling pin, has made regular appearances.
“We’ve had so many families coming through this bowling center — three and four generations,” Tierney said. “It’s sad for the community; it’s sad for the families, it’s sad for the special-needs families that came here.”
Among the regulars over the decades have been UC Berkeley students.
“We’re very attached to the University of California in Berkeley,” Tierney said. “The athletic department is not going to have a bowling center anymore. The Cal football team comes to bowl here.”
Since word of the closure began circulating, Tierney said, the center has been getting at least a dozen calls a day, including one from Albany Police Chief John Geissberger, who exclaimed, “Oh, my God!”
Finding a buyer for the large building near the city’s northern border property won’t be hard, but Tierney doubts it will continue as a bowling alley. The city is in the process of developing a specific plan to encourage larger and denser residential development on San Pablo
Avenue, and the Albany Bowl site already has been identified in Albany’s 2015-23 housing element as a potential project location.
“I don’t have an answer for what they’re going to do,” Tierney said. “I’m just trying to get through the heartache.”