The Zone Bowling Center re-opens with 25 percent capacity

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The Zone Bowling Center, located at 1401 S. Hobart St., re-opened on May 22 in time for Memorial Day weekend after the Texas Governor Greg Abbott eased restrictions on bowling alleys across Texas.

“We’re only at 25 percent capacity and, of course, they want you to maintain six-feet social distancing,” owner Cody Stanford said. “That (social distancing) is usually not a problem for us. What we did is we pick the lanes and we took about half of our chairs out so it’s not inviting to sit right next to each other.”

Stanford added customers have had a good awareness about what is going on with COVID-19 and are practicing social distancing themselves. Staff at The Zone have been persistent on wiping down tables, equipment and cleaning shoes after a group leaves. Pool cues are also cleaned consistently.

“We were pretty clean beforehand,” Stanford said. “So we didn’t change a whole lot. We just upped the frequency of it. Shoes are sprayed after every use anyways. The balls are cleaned after each day and after each person uses them. We got rid of menus and use the digital board. If we can’t throw it away, we will try to eliminate contact and clean it up as we go.”

Stanford added the arcade cabinets and other machines are cleaned constantly.

After being shut down, the staff took a week off to re-assess everything going on and then went back to work to do training, remodeling and cleaning.

“We cleaned up a bunch of stuff that needed to go away,” Stanford said. “We re-freshened up everything, went through some lane issues we had and for a good month we were working on everything we needed to get done.”

Stanford said the center was really busy the first weekend after re-opening and this past weekend they had to turn people away because they were meeting the 25 percent capacity.

“My capacity is still pretty high but we didn’t want to push it,” Stanford said. “Normal is 470, so we are at a little over 100 people for the 25 percent. We don’t want to do that just yet.”

Stanford added they are suggesting customers just play with their family or group they came in with them, but it also depends on the comfort of the customer.

Speaking of families, The Zone Bowling center has a special running for the next two weeks: all-you-can-bowl $79.99 for a family throughout the end of September. In mid-June it’ll go up to $99.99.

They are still doing $2 Tuesdays and $39.99 family pizza special on Friday nights. Sundays feature $1.50 games.

Stanford recommends calling for lane availability on Wednesdays and Thursdays due to league bowling.

The Zone Bowling Center is open Tuesday through Saturday 2 to 10 p.m. and Sundays 12 to 6 p.m. They are closed Mondays.

For more information on the Zone Bowling Center call 806-665-5181 or visit their Facebook page.