You could say for Don and Norma Lancaster, bowling is right up their alley. The Clyde couple, previous owners of the now-shuttered Donselaar’s Sports Bar & Grill Bowling Center in their hometown, have bought it back. They closed the deal on Wednesday, but have already been working on a renovation for several weeks, targeting an August opening.
“We’re doing it because we want to give something back to the community,” Don said about turning Donselaar’s back into Lancaster’s. “There can be nothing much to do in Clyde. This will be more of an entertainment center than a bowling center. We’ll have darts and cornhole, and I just put in a 40-foot bar and we’ll have 20 different craft beers.”
The new center will have six lanes instead of 12 to make room for the darts and for the cornhole leagues, as well as maybe a few pool tables, Norma said. There will also be a “quality bar menu,” according to Don. “We’ll have good sandwiches.”
The Lancasters aren’t just pinning their hopes on a dream. Their previous experience with the sport makes them uniquely qualified to roll a strike with the enterprise.
Don was just 20 in 1986 when he purchased the bowling center on Route 31 in Lyons from a lady who was retiring from the business. His mother was a bowler, and he said he’d grown up around bowling centers. And his family, who lived in Lyons at the time, was familiar with the owner.
“She knew I had a genuine interest in bowling and she was kind enough to sell it to me,” Don said. “I was so young that I had to wait 20 days until I turned 21 to get my liquor license.”
He was ambitious, and he was ready to “fall on my face,” but instead he found that he was successful.
“Today, a person who is 21 doesn’t buy a place like that,” Norma said.
Unfortunately, the Lancasters, who married two years after Don bought the Lyons center, lost it to a horrific fire in 1996. Instead of rebuilding, they looked to an existing bowling center in Norma’s hometown of Clyde, and purchased that instead in 1997.
“We ran it until 2004,” Don said. “It wasn’t that I wanted to sell it, but I had two people who wanted to buy it.”
When the opportunity came to buy it back, Don and Norma decided to get the ball rolling. Even before they closed on the property, they began clean-up and renovation work, most of which they are doing themselves.
Don ripped out six of the bowling lanes, but knowing how highly sought-after the wood from old bowling lanes is, he advertised it on Facebook’s marketplace. Almost instantly, he was able to sell 350 feet of it. He said he needs to use the footings underneath the lanes for other aspects of the new construction.
The Lancasters are hoping that when the work is done, the community will embrace the idea of a more diverse entertainment center, and not simply a place to bowl.
“We will have bowling leagues Monday through Friday, and we are hoping that Clyde-Savannah High School will bring its bowling team back,” Don said. “They’ve been using Rose Bowl Lanes in Newark because this place was closed.”
Once it is up and running in August, the facility will have two or three employees to start, with more planned as it grows, Don said. He will keep his full-time job as a municipal equipment salesman and Norma, who is the Galen deputy clerk, will continue in her position as well.
“There is quite a loyal following for this place around Clyde and Lyons,” Don said. “We expect it will be very busy when we open. We will have to see how it goes after that.”
