Businessman bets
Lakewood Ranch wants to bowl...
Not long after the sun goes down, the lights go out in
Lakewood Ranch.
Dick Hubbard, owner of
Sarasota Lanes, is willing to bet $7 milling that bowling is the
solution to those evening doldrums in Lakewood Ranch.
Hubbard recently
won county approval for a 60,000-square-foot bowling complex near
the northeast corner of Lakewood Ranch Boulevard and State Road 70.
Increasingly, bowling
centers across the country have become updated entertainment centers
that hose m=not only leagues and snack bars but also offer things
such as full restaurants, billiards, go-karts, mini-golf and even
movie theaters.
The Lakewood Ranch
facility will offer 40 lanes of bowling, a restaurant and a game
room. Plans are to keep it open past midnight.
"There's no place where
a guy can go out with his wife and kids out there. Not too
many places anyway," Hubbard said. "Not everyone is a
golfer."
The $7 million bowling
center, and an accompanying 45,000-square-foot retail strip, is only
a small part of a much larger proposed housing and commercial
development called Lakewood Center.
That proposed
development calls for 3,675 homes and 3.2 million square feet of
commercial and office space as the ranch's development moves
northward from S.R.70. Lakewood Ranch now has about 6,000
homes and 14,000 residents.
Construction of the
lanes will start in December at the earliest, and could take a year.
Herald-Tribune,
Thursday, August 23, 2007
