BY MATT KITE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 3/27/26 |
For such a huge operation, Tower Lanes on 6th Avenue in Tacoma’s West End resembles a small, close-knit family. The 32,000-square-foot building houses sixteen bowling lanes, an eighteen-hole miniature golf course, a lively arcade, a multiuse banquet room, and a popular restaurant and bar. All told, forty-five people work here.
Nevertheless, a first-time visitor will be forgiven for feeling like they’ve just stepped into a wholesome family environment. Everyone knows everyone, it seems, from the workers to the bowlers to the diners. Young children skip ahead of their slower-moving grandparents, teenagers rub shoulders with their parents, and everyone is here to do one thing: have fun.
“A lot of people spend the night here bowling and then at the restaurant,” says Bob Hanson, Tower Lanes’ general manager since 2008. “We get a lot of corporate events too. We do a lot of Christmas parties. Most corporate events aren’t very family-oriented, but here they can bring the whole family. We treat it as a family place, and we know everybody that bowls here and the league and stuff, so it’s very important.”
Adds Brenda Zimmerman, a manager at the recreation complex for the last decade and a half, “It’s all ages. Everybody can find fun no matter what their skill level is.”
First-time visitors will also note Tower Lanes’ timeless feel. The scoring is done by computers now, not by hand with grease pencils, but the same clatter of bowling balls colliding with pins has been serenading bowlers here since 1957, when the bowling alley first opened.
At the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” topped the record charts, and more than eighteen million people tuned in to CBS every Saturday night to watch Gunsmoke, the most popular show on television.
A dozen presidents have served since then, but life at Tower Lanes goes on much the same as it did nearly seventy years ago. Originally, the bowling alley featured twenty-four lanes, but eight were removed when the previous owner expanded the building to include the huge miniature golf course under the same roof. A small snack bar was replaced by a full-service restaurant and bar, and eventually other amenities like the arcade filled out the space.
Today, Tower Lanes provides refuge for recreationalists who would rather play inside than brave Tacoma’s wet and windy weather from fall through spring. Summers are a bit quieter here, but the fun never stops.
“We’re very weather-sensitive,” Hanson explains. “The minute daylight saving time comes and seventy-five-degree weather comes, we’ll see that fall off for the rest of the summer.”
The entertainment center’s revenue stream is hardest hit in September, when the beginning of league play coincides with the start of the Puyallup Fair. But overall, Tower Lanes has managed to remain a stable business for decades.
Tower Lanes and the Proctor District’s Chalet Bowl are the only two remaining bowling alleys in Tacoma proper. Hanson chalks that fact up to the premium price of urban real estate.
“When we built all the bowling alleys,” he says, “they were built on the outskirts of the cities, at least in this area, and now the outskirts of the city is the center of the city, so the property value has gone up.”
The mid-1960s marked bowling’s zenith in America, with local Tacoma bowling alleys ranging from small family-run venues to huge operations with as many as thirty-six lanes. Many of those alleys succumbed to the march of time and eventually gave way to apartment complexes and grocery stores.
These days, profit margins are as slim as ever, and Hanson struggles to keep pace with inflation.
“We’ve had to raise prices a little bit,” he says. “That’s the hard part. Our restaurant is popular, but seventy-five percent of the diners are senior citizens. When the cost of living rises, we can compensate by raising prices, but senior citizens don’t get that raise. We can recover, but then they’re not here once or twice a week. They’ll say, ‘Well, we can’t afford it.’”
Nevertheless, the restaurant’s breakfast menu, in particular, remains popular with the regulars, who keep showing up. Hanson, too, keeps coming back.
“It’s getting tougher and tougher,” he says. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s getting tougher. The kids are the thing that keeps me involved in this.”
Hanson points to several white banners hanging above the pin decks. Each banner celebrates a young bowler who has earned a college scholarship through programs like the Gift for Life Scholarship awarded by the United States Bowling Congress (USBC).
“A lot of people don’t know about the scholarship opportunities in bowling,” Zimmerman adds.
Indeed, bowling scholarships are available at countless schools, from small community colleges to NCAA powerhouses.
An accomplished bowler himself, Hanson has been inducted into four halls of fame, including the Washington Coaches Hall of Fame and the Greater Tacoma Bowling Hall of Fame. Like a lot of bowlers, he caught the bug early and spent much of his youth at Tower Lanes, where he bowled his first 300 game.
Hanson occasionally gives tours of the narrow causeway behind the pinsetters.
“There’s more back there than people realize,” he says.
Damon Isaacson, Tower Lanes’ mechanic and utility worker, has been here since 1993. He was born in 1974, the same year the alley’s pinsetters arrived from Japan. Few people know how to work on the old machines, which feature several moving parts that need servicing, including the sweep bar, pin elevator, and ball return, to name a few.
“The motor and gearboxes are harder to get replacement parts for,” Isaacson says.
Isaacson and Hanson say the sport is trending toward string pins, a simpler machine that is popular in Germany. But for now, Tower Lanes will keep making the best of its aging but dependable system.
Bowlers, meanwhile, will continue to show up like clockwork, passing the afternoon or evening in a comforting rhythm that hasn’t changed since 1957.
“The bowling center is what you make of it,” Zimmerman says. “You can make it a sport. You can play it for entertainment only. You can bring your corporate event here. You can earn a scholarship to college. It depends on which part of life you’re in.”
Tower Lanes Entertainment Center located at 6323 6th Ave, Tacoma, WA. Learn more at Towerlanes.net.
