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Originally Posted by Ex-Ithacan
Yeah, I agree about the bowling. I do remember when I was a kid, there was a 4 lane alley in the basement of a sporting goods/hobby store at the end of Eddy street. It was cramped (no seating behind the lanes, only off to the left side), and no automatic pin reset-there was a guy rolling the ball back and setting the pins. Maybe a small basement type bowling alley/ bar with a few lanes and some music playing would work. Oh well. Whit, did you read the other article about Bloomfield and Schon, the Cayuga Green developers? They are loved everywhere they go, but hit the wall in Ithaca. Almost gave up the fight, but city officils convinced them to stick it out, thank goodnes.
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I go in there quite a bit when I'm home, since part of it became the Chariot (Good Pizza, plus the floors are the bowling alley floors.) I have no beef with most of the project, but you know my view on the movie theater section, which is whre I would have come up against the wall with the project and the city allowing the tax breaks for this segment, especially since many studies have proven that tax breaks are ineffective as development tools.
As far as the bowling center in downtown goes, I don't think that the economics of an 8 lane center would work even there, since the insurance costs for a facility would scare off most investors, and the 40 year mortgage would scare off others (I saw an article quoting Chuck Parkin, owner of the Bowl-O Drome talking about expanding his center after the demise of Ides and these numbers came up.)