Fort Worth Business Press

June 30, 2008

Bowling museum is rolling onto Arlington campus

By Betty Dillard

Arlington struck a perfect score among bowling fans and city officials with the recent news that the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame will relocate its home from St. Louis – where it has been a downtown fixture for almost 25 years.

The 18,000-square-foot Arlington museum – the museum’s former location is being sold to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club for redevelopment – is expected to open within 18 months along with the rest of the nine-acre bowling complex, which will include bowling corporate offices and a $3 million, 20,000-square-foot product testing and training facility.

The United States Bowling Congress purchased the former Raytheon building – a 103,772-square-foot Class A building on 6.4 acres – in March for $8 million. The 2.3 million-member organization will relocate its headquarters from metropolitan Milwaukee to the Arlington site, where it will be housed with its sister industry trade group, the Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America, an Arlington fixture for the past three decades.

“The Museum and Hall of Fame was an additional piece we had not anticipated when we first started negotiations,” said Robert Sturns, economic development manager for the city of Arlington. “With all three here, the economic impact for Arlington will be great with an opportunity to increase the overall level of tourism.”

The bowling partners plan to build a $14 million international campus at 621 Six Flags Drive, making Arlington the new “cultural home of bowling.” The high-profile site, near the Rangers Ballpark, the new Dallas Cowboys stadium and Six Flags Over Texas, is expected to help expand the sport.

“Arlington is becoming a sports center, and this concept will be the only one of its kind in the world,” said Senior Associate Brett Campbell of Glacier Commercial Realty LP, who along with Andrew Beckman represented the bowling organization in the deal.

The purchase is the largest single tenant office sale in Arlington since 1994, Campbell said. Negotiations to purchase a one-acre parcel of land that separates the groups’ properties are still under way.

“Arlington is very aggressive and when we approached them, they were all about it,” Campbell said. “The city has been very helpful and this deal has only increased Arlington’s presence in sports and entertainment. The deal has been great for both the sport of bowling and the city of Arlington.”

The joint venture includes $693,000 from the Texas Enterprise Fund and a 55 percent tax abatement on property improvements over a 10-year period. The city of Arlington has agreed to waive development fees for the project, which is expected to bring about 230 jobs to the area.

Sturns said the Bowling Congress will attract thousands of fans to its annual events, including a bowling expo in 2010 or 2011 that is expected to bring 5,000 attendees for a two-week stay.