The "girls" of the St. Polycarp league filled up half of Sacco's Bowl Haven in Davis Square last Monday for their weekly candlepin match. Bells rang out amid the wood paneling and orange carpet each time someone had a strike or spare. The sound of falling pins ricocheted off brown metal lockers.
"It's a night out. If you happen to bowl good, you bowl good," said league leader Alice Kelley, 65, who has a 94 average.
But after 68 years, times are changing at Bowl Haven. In late August, fourth-generation owner J.P. Sacco signed a purchase-and-sale agreement with businesswoman Trish Blain. The price wasn't disclosed, but the projected closing date is April 1, Blain said, to give the leagues time to finish.
Sacco emphasized that the deal could still fall through. Perhaps he even wants it to.
"It's tough for me to see us no longer run it," he said. "I like the idea of keeping alive a business everyone thinks is a dinosaur." His family owned 19 bowling alleys over the years, but "this is it. This is the last of the lanes."
Billiards has fallen off to the tune of $20,000 a year, he said. A purist, Sacco never added alcohol or even coffee to supplement the bowling, which tops out at $3 per string.
It's not just the prices that are old-fashioned. The orange-and-teal paint job dates to the '60s. A black metal hanging tray, slats numbered one through eight, holds pool table paper slips.
"The lanes are the original lanes, but we picked them up and turned them around," Sacco said, or rather his grandfather did.
He sold to Blain because she wants to keep the bowling alley a community center - of a sort.
Blain calls herself "an entrepreneur with a social mission." Her vision is "to create an in-real-life social-networking facility," she said. "You could meet with a client, have lunch, then have a book club meeting at the end of the day." (She had planned to call it The Connection Center, but the concept is getting a name change.)
Depending on permits and possible adjacent land purchases, the center could be small or large. Blain plans to throw her hat into the ring to build a hotel on the parking lot across the street.
What will happen to the lanes? Blain said at least some of them will stay.
"At this point, the real scenarios are just how much of the bowling are we keeping or not keeping," she said.
A larger project - such as a hotel across the street - would generate the revenue to keep more of the lanes. Blain noted that she cannot put a 100-room hotel on the existing Sacco's site.
Bowling alone simply would not cover a mortgage, she said.
Although it taps into newfangled trends such as telecommuting and meet-ups, the new center will use some of Bowl Haven's old decor. "The ball returns, they're just gorgeous," Blain said. "We like incorporating aspects of the history."
She is also concerned with the neighbors.
"If they were very upset with what we've done, that wouldn't serve us very well," she said. She recently presented her ideas at the Davis Square Task Force meeting and plans to survey residents to see what they want.
Still, some might answer they don't want any of it. "There's not enough bowling alleys left around anyway," Kelley said. "Why can't they just leave it the way it is and fix it up?"
Lorraine Trant, 72, of Medford remembered her father bowling at the alley while she and her mother shopped in Davis Square.
She bowled the night before her daughter was born.
"She was going to be born with bowling balls in her hands, I thought," Trant joked.
The baby emerged unscathed and, now grown, spends Monday nights with her mom at Sacco's.
If Bowl Haven lost its bowl, what would the 57-year-old St. Polycarp league do?
"Probably close. Because there's really no place else," said scorekeeper Elaine Ghiloni, 59.
The league lost its previous homes on Highland Avenue and Broadway. She thought many wouldn't travel to Lanes and Games on Route 2 in Cambridge.
For the time being - and possibly the future - J.P. Sacco said they should keep coming to Davis Square.
"If [the sale] doesn't happen, I'm keeping it a bowling alley," he said.
The St. Polycarp's bowlers haven't rung their last bell yet.
