Just down the hill from where the city's longtime hospital building was recently wiped away, another Bremerton icon from a different era is being erased.
Demolition began Monday on former Bay Bowl, a bowling alley built more than 80 years ago that operated on Lower Wheaton Way just south of Harrison Hospital for decades. A hub when the sport was central to social life in Kitsap County, the property being cleared is now slated as a major part of the potential for the Sheridan Park neighborhood's future.
No one had rolled a ball inside old brick building, built in 1942 as a movie theater for military families, for more than a decade, according to former building owner Chris Campana. And outside of a brief period around 2014 when a Thai restaurant operated out of what was once the alley's lobby , the building sat unused save for graffiti artists displaying their work and opinions on its large brick facades and extended bays, its former neon letters vertically spelling "B-A-Y" having been stripped away years before.
"In all honestly, when I saw it (on Monday) I called a friend and told him I wanted to run home and grab a sledgehammer to get a few swings in," Steve Force of Bremerton said, joking about his own inability to score a good game on the Bay Bowl's 20 lanes, built at different times and split on either side of the facility's fireplace. "It was an institution around here, and that's all good. But a tough house for me, for whatever reason."
Force was among Kitsap's well known bowlers for years, and recalled good memories of the Bay Bowl from his days playing in junior leagues to tournaments as an adult. The Bay Bowl was known as the home of a scratch bowlers league, offered programs for kids, and slowly wound down service in the mid-2000s after its last stand hosting a Thursday night tavern league.
"It was a fun place to go, everybody in our family went there," said Lonnie Sharkey, a Kitsap County Bowling Association Hall of Famer who got into the game as a young adult in the 1970s. Sharkey was once part of a stunning accomplishment that will go down in history at what he called "a mom and pop place": In March 2000, three men rolled 300 games -- that's a perfect score in bowling -- on the same night. Then six months later, to the day, according to Sun archives, Sharkey and two others pulled it off again, within minutes of each other.
Archives for the Bremerton Sun and Kitsap Sun also highlight a long history for the facility that was built as a theater for military families during WWII but closed in the early 1950s and was sold to the city. The Mulnix family bought it in 1954. Forest Mulnix had opened a six-lane bowling alley beneath the former city hall on Fourth Street in 1948, then moved over to open an eight-lane alley downtown, known as Mul's Rialto Bowl, before taking the business across Port Washington Narrows to open Bay Bowl.
The alley would stay under family ownership for 50 years, and three generations, until John and Patsy White sold it to Campagna in 2003.
"In its heyday everybody went there," Campana said this week, after hearing about the demolition. "It was one of those social connections we've lost."
Next, a multi-million dollar apartment project that retains the 'Bay'
On Tuesday developer Mark Goldberg, who now owns the property, visited the demolition site. In just 45 minutes multiple passersby stopped to gawk, comment about the building's past, and ask him about its future.
"It was touching," Goldberg said. "They'd tell me their memories from 40, 50 years ago."
Goldberg is behind a project that has been in the works for several years, and now likely months away from commencing. He said Wednesday that developers hope to break ground in January on an $82-million, 187-unit, five-story apartment complex, with a glass breezeway three stories up that connects two planned towers . Environmental permits and city permits have already been issued. It will also be known as the "Bay Bowl Apartments," Goldberg said, retaining some history at the same time it introduces a revolutionary project to the Sheridan Village neighborhood.
"We hope and pray that this happens, because it'll change the landscape for Kitsap County," Goldberg said. "This project will be winning project of the year awards in Washington when it's finished."
Such a project, just blocks away from where the hospital site is also envisioned for residential construction, across the street from a new building housing medical workers and not far from a condominiums near completion at Wheaton Way and Warren Avenue, is what city leaders envisioned when the former Harrison announced in 2014 it was moving all operations to its Silverdale campus, Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler said.
An update to the neighborhood's zoning, once envisioned as the "Eastside Village" but now going by the moniker "Harrison Heights," paved the way for larger building heights and more density for the blocks between Lower Wheaton Way and Sylvan Way.
"You're seeing new construction, development in that area," Wheeler said, also pointing out new restaurants like Restaurant Lolo, Heathen's Bakery or Taqueros Taste of Mexico along the stretch of road the Harrison tower used to loom over. "This fits with what we were hoping to achieve in that area. Revitalization, giving it a new purpose."
Wheeler, who grew up visiting the Bay Bowl when his parents played in league night before learning to bowl himself as a Dewey Junior High student or in a shipyard swing shift league, also pointed to what will be a revelation: clearing a sight line over Port Washington Narrows the bowling alley has obscured for years.
"We're going to see views that are just unmatched in Kitsap County," Wheeler said.
Memories of more than strikes and spares
Nearly everyone interviewed for this story said their parents regularly bowled at the Bay Bowl. It was one of several facilities across Kitsap County during an era when bowling boomed, including Poulsbo Bowling Alley, Bainbridge Bowl in Winslow, West Park Bowling Lanes and Strike Zone in Bremerton and the Brem-Rec on Callow Avenue, in addition to the former Mulnix holdings downtown. Today all that's left standing in Kitsap are the the Hi-Joy in Port Orchard and All-Star Lanes in Silverdale for the public, and some lanes for military families at Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton.
League play was so popular with adults that Bay Bowl had a childcare room upstairs, where Campana remembers being dropped off when he was very young, so his mother could roll downstairs. The facility also had pool tables, where Patricia Randall would spend afternoons with her dad after her parents divorced and three siblings grew up and moved away from home. Randall learned pool, but never excelled at bowling ("I was known to throw the ball across a couple of lanes," she said this week).
That didn't stop her from joining Wade Randall on a double-date there in the early 1970s (her parents insisted she wouldn't go alone), which eventually led to more trips for the young couple to bowl or shoot pool. One night in 1972, as Patricia retrieved her ball, Wade got down on one knee, and proposed. This year the couple, now living in Port Orchard, celebrated 50 years of marriage.
Though Patricia admits the family moved on from bowling years ago, when she saw a photo on Facebook of the building being torn down, nostalgia struck for those dating years, when their story was the same for many in Bremerton: "We were always at the Bay Bowl."
This story has been updated to correct that Bangor's bowling alley has closed.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Bremerton Bay Bowl torn down, but major housing project to retain the name
Local News
