10/11/2025
🎳 Project Update: Pressing Pause for Now
Over the last 3+ years, we’ve poured our hearts, time, and personal resources into bringing Franklin’s dream of having a bowling and entertainment center back to life. We’ve worked tirelessly to unite the right partners, funding, and vision to make this project happen — because we truly believed in what it could mean for our community.
Despite those efforts, we haven’t made enough progress to move forward, and at this time, we’re unable to continue investing the additional time and funds needed to take it across the finish line. For that reason, we’ve made the difficult decision to pause our efforts for the foreseeable future.
Throughout this journey, we’ve worked within three distinct “camps” — each with very different perspectives:
• Local investors who simply wanted to see Franklin’s beloved old-school, 24-lane bowling alley return in its former glory.
• Industry experts who consistently advised that such a large, retro-style facility would not be profitable, strongly encouraging us to scale down and modernize with fewer lanes and string pinsetters.
• Start-up and economic development groups whose resources and incentives are largely designed for industrial use rather than entertainment-based ventures, leaving very little support for projects like ours.
Despite our best attempts to find a middle ground, we were unable to bring those three camps into a concise compromise on the business plan and scope of the project. The result has been a constant tug-of-war between vision, viability, and available resources — and ultimately, our hands have been tied in one direction or another from the start.
To be transparent, a few recent developments also influenced our decision:
• Our retired Brunswick Executive Mentor ultimately didn’t see the value in reopening a retro bowling and entertainment center using the original lanes and equipment — and has since stepped away.
• Invest Appalachia, which had initially expressed interest in helping us secure investors and financing, recently informed us that they’ve never funded a project exceeding $2 million and don’t feel they can support us due to our backgrounds being outside of the bowling, entertainment, and restaurant industries.
While this isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, we remain deeply grateful for the encouragement and enthusiasm shown by so many in the community. Your excitement reminded us why we started this journey in the first place — and who knows, maybe this pause is just the intermission before the next frame. 🎳
For now, we’ll be refocusing on our other businesses and projects, but we’ll always carry forward the vision of what could be. If anyone is interested in taking up the project, we would be more than happy to share everything we have and give our support. Just send us a private message. Thank you again for believing in the dream with us.
— The Dogwood Lanes Team
