Keep on rolling

Bowling returns to our neighborhood 70 years after its golden era

Story by Rachel Stone

The last of our neighborhood bowling alleys, Jupiter Lanes, closed two years ago, even though its owner had just spent $2 million renovating it. The popularity of bowling has dwindled in the past several decades, but a new wave of upscale bowling centers is setting trends.

The first new bowling alley Dallas has seen in decades is set to open in the Shops at Park Lane this fall. Two Lakewood-based entrepreneurs, Kyle Noonan and Josh Sepkowitz, are planning the center, Bowl & Barrel, which will o er specialty beers and gourmet pub grub, along with plush banquettes at the lanes’ ends. The wildly trendy Brooklyn Bowl in New York City inspired their business idea.

Noonan and Sepkowitz, who were SMU fraternity brothers, knew they eventually wanted to go into business together. Noonan had a 12-year career with Pappas Brothers restaurants, and Sepkowitz has a background in investment banking and real estate.

“We started looking at the major trend-setting cities — New York, Chicago, L.A. — and we saw this undercurrent that people wanted to go bowling,” Noonan says. “And it’s people you wouldn’t necessarily associate with your typical bowler.”

After a visit to Brooklyn Bowl about two years ago, they hired a consultant to determine whether such a business would work in Dallas. The answer, overwhelmingly, was “yes.” So they quit their jobs about a year ago and have been working on their upstart fulltime since then.

It took a year for Noonan and Sepkowitz to find the right location