Brunswick Zone - Lakewood, Colorado

Bowling alley's are usually tough to get decent photographs of. They tend to not have many windows, and the exterior is almost always bland and boring. With that in mind, I bring you the former Brunswick Zone in Lakewood, Colorado.

Internet research didn't turn up a whole lot of useful information on this former bowling alley. About the best I could come up with was it's last recorded open date coming in the Summer of 2011. That was based solely on online reviews. (Which were favorable, for what it's worth...)


The parking lot around Brunswick Zone wrapped around the back and sides of the building, with only neglected landscaping in the front. All entrance points were boarded up tight and no windows could be found. So I knew this mission was going to be a let down as soon as I got here...


I did like the tacky two-tone khaki paint job that wrapped the entire building. The dark blue fake awning stands out against it, as well as switching to checkers for the slightly rounded part...

Look, I'm trying to make all this sound exciting, but it clearly isn't...

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh loooooook! A can bank! I bet you all the empties in my car that it doesn't work!


Around back is "Lounge." With such an exotic name, I wonder what kind of awesomeness that hot spot could have once been?

As I drove around the corner, I was startled by a cop sitting in his car. He was just hanging out behind the old abandoned bowling alley after solving every possible crime in town earlier that morning. I was temporarily worried I was going to be hassled as to why I was driving around an abandoned bowling alley, but he quickly drove away after looking at me... I'm guessing he was waiting for "Lounge" to open... Or to close, so he could ambush all the intoxicated drivers...


I'm pretty sure this was the main entrance. It too was sealed up tight. The tire marks on the pavement were not from me. Nor the hiding police officer... From the looks of things, people come to this parking lot to show off in their cars. At least Brunswick Zone is seeing some use. Not entirely sure how it's profitable...


Apparently they couldn't find the darker of the two khaki shades of paint to properly cover up graffiti...


Wow, only two employees work here... Or a whole bunch of them have to car pool... They must have had some stressful shifts while working here...

Uhhh... I give up... This place is so boring, I can't even make fun of it...

My guess is that Brunswick Zone had been closed for at least four years when I took these pictures in September, 2015. I found that a much newer, bigger and Brunswickier bowling alley had opened up few miles northwest of here around the same time. I'm assuming they shifted efforts to the new location and shuttered this one. Strange that no one seems interested in the property given it's prime location and the ridiculous Denver real estate market.

If that's the case and this building has been sitting empty for five plus years now, it's in pretty good shape. The parking lot looks to be in decent condition. The weeds growing in the cracks on the west side of the building are about the only weeds in the whole lot. Which would be amazing for five plus years of non use.

Yeah... This was a disappointment...

When you are given a tip of some place you should check out, you hope for a something exciting. This was as exciting as a second hand pair of khaki pants from a neighbor's garage sale. Either shade of the stripes on the walls...

Now if there would have been an open window to peek inside, those khaki's would easily become cargo shorts!


Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 4, 2021 at 2:08 PM

    I remember when this was called Brunswick Broadmoor Bowl back in the day when I was about six years old and learned to bowl here in 1972. We had just moved up from Denver in August of 1972. The last time I bowled here was in 1993.

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