AMF City Limits Lanes in Rosemount has closed
Bowling center has been there since 1962
AMF City Limits Lanes has been closed without notification to frequent users of the bowling center at 15400 Robert Trail in Rosemount.
One person who has participated in a league for the past several years said her bowling ball stored in a locker was moved to the AMF in Bloomington where she was instructed to pick it up.
The closure comes on the heels of the shuttering of other AMF bowling centers across the country. A search of other recent closings found that another center in Chattanooga, Tenn., closed July 9, and other AMF centers closed in Savannah, Ga., Springfield, Mass., and Yuma, Ariz., in the past three months.
Reports from all of the closings appear to follow the same pattern.
A note is posted on the door announcing the closing and directing people to contact another nearby bowling center. In Rosemount’s case, that is Southtown Lanes, 7941 Southtown Center, Bloomington.
The Mechanicsville, Va.-based AMF Bowling Worldwide Inc., which reportedly ran about 300 bowling centers across the country at the end of 2011, said with the other closures that they were business decisions.
AMF received a two-level downgrade to Caa3 by Moody’s Investors Service in December, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report.
The report said Moody’s maintained a negative outlook on AMF’s $337 million of bank debt.
News of the bowling alley’s closure from residents has been met with a “that’s too bad” reaction.
One longtime user noted that City Limits had neglected simple maintenance repairs, which makes the closing not that surprising.
The city of Rosemount has had a bowling alley since George and Muriel Hammond built the building in 1962, according to local historian Maureen Geraghty Bouchard. It was called Satellite Lanes.
According to Dakota County property records, the payable 2012 total value of the 22,891-square-foot building and the 3.83-acre property was listed at $861,000.
Its owner was listed as Stillwater-based Summit City Limits, LLC, for which a phone number was not found.
