March 18, 2024

Cardinal Lanes closing

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Cardinal Lanes closes its doors May 15.

It is not what Jeff and Bev Van Blair wanted. It’s not what anyone wanted, but it’s happening. They had weathered the ebb and flow of business for more than 34 years. This time it was too much.

“We want to thank the community for its patronage all these years,” Bev Van Blair said. “We especially want to thank our weekly league bowlers who stayed with us this year. It meant a lot to us.”

Cardinal Lanes has gone through foreclosure proceedings and will be sold at a Jasper County Sheriff’s Sale at 10 a.m. on May 19.

“We’ll miss being here for sure. We raised our family here, and it was a good place to be. All of our kids worked here and have stories to share of doing that,” Van Blair said. “Mostly, I hope we’ve instilled a love of the sport in those kids who have gone throughout youth program and have become adult bowlers.

“We hope they all love bowling as much as we do.”

The Van Blairs helped establish the push for high school bowling as a varsity sport. Van Blair said she and her husband ran the program for the first 10 years as a club sport. She said they worked with other bowling center proprietors across the state of Iowa on behalf of high school bowling.

Newton High’s boys and girls’ bowling teams have been competitive since being established as a sanctioned varsity sport seven years ago. Cardinal Lanes provided the teams a place to practice and hold meets without cost.

“We have a contingency plan in place in case Cardinal Lanes does not reopen,” said Scott Garvis, NHS activities director. “Our teams will practice and hold meets at Mustangs Lanes in Monroe. We want to make sure our student athletes have the opportunity to continue our strong bowling programs.”

Van Blair said it was important to them the young people continue to bowl. They’ve had strong youth leagues at Cardinal Lanes over the years.

“We had as many as 300 kids during a season. This past season, we had 75 kids in our youth leagues. We were flexible in our scheduling of those leagues. It was good to have six or seven smaller groups throughout the week than one large group on one day,” Van Blair said. “That allowed us more time with the kids to help develop their skills.”

For the high school program, Van Blair said this past season, Newton had 30 bowlers. She said the Cardinal athletes had 3,100 practice games and bowled 587 games in meets. The bowling center did not charge the school, she said.

“Bowling is the fastest growing youth sport right now. It’s mainly because of high school and collegiate bowling,” she said.

However, a decline has been seen across the nation in the traditional league bowling, Van Blair said. Most businesses are now seeing 50 percent league bowling and 50 percent open play.

Van Blair is the current president of the Iowa Bowling Proprietors Association of America (BPAA) and she is on the national BPAA board of directors, representing the western central regional — Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota. She has been active with the BPAA over the years doing committee work and was the 2008 BPAA Proprietor of the Year in Iowa.

The Van Blairs became proprietors of a bowling center in 1978 when they purchased one in Humboldt. She said they bought the 12-lane center in February, then it burnt down in October of that year.

“Jeff began bowling with friends at Maytag, where he was working, and he really liked the sport,” Van Blair said. “My father invested money with us to buy the Humboldt center. Jeff went back to work at Maytag for several years until 1981 when this bowling center became available.”

In September 1981, the Van Blairs purchased Cardinal Lanes, a 20-lane bowling center, from Joe Fleming. The current building was built in 1970, but the bowling center moved from a 14-lane setup at 12th Street and First Avenue.

“At one time there were 36 lanes of bowling here in Newton. That is unusual for a town this size, but Maytag was going strong and the support was there,” Van Blair said. “Today, to have a viable business, you need 2,500 people per lane bed to get financing for a bowling center.”

After one year of operation, the Van Blairs began upgrading the bowling center starting with replacing obsolete pin spotters and replacing the over-lane ball returns with under-lane ball returns during the summer of 1982. They had to jack hammer through concrete for tunnels between all the lanes to install the underground return system.

Several other upgrades were permanent bumpers in each lanes for youth bowling instead of plastic tubes and the automatic computer scoring system. Van Blair said Cardinal Lanes was able to go to the computer scoring system in 1996 because it held the Iowa state men’s bowling tournament in Newton in 1997.

“We’ve had some rough years. The late 1980s and early 1990s had a downturn. We bought the building and land from my parents and refinanced in 2004. We were at a high point then. We saw reduced business following the smoking ban and the TouchPlay machines leave in 2006 and 2007, then when Maytag sold and eventually closed,” Van Blair said.

Van Blair said the worst came in 2014 with a terrible winter and last summer when business really fell off. She said business was tough four or five years ago, but they really thought they could weather the storm.

“We recognized after last summer it wasn’t coming back. We had several vendors who extended credit to us so we could try to stay in business this season to try to pay everybody. We’ve been renting the space for this year,” Van Blair said.

She said 18 of the 20 lanes at the bowling center are usable. She said resurfacing lanes, which is done every three or four years, costs at least $17,000. Van Blair said the reduced business prevented some needed upgrades of equipment for the bowling center.

“We’re just sorry we couldn’t turn things around. We love bowling. We’ve had a good run here in Newton. We’ve had strong support from the community. Again, we thank everyone and we will miss being here,” Van Blair said.

Contact Jocelyn Sheets at 641-792-3121 ext. 6535 or jsheets@newtondailynews.com