Los Campeones Gym To Replace Long Vacant Brooklyn Center Bowling Alley
A property that has sat vacant for nine years will soon get new life in Brooklyn Center.
The former AMF Earle Brown Lanes bowling alley will be transformed into a Los Campeones fitness facility.
The 35,000-square-foot bowling venue was constructed in 1978. It closed in 2015 and has been vacant since.
The owner of Los Campeones, which means champions in Spanish, has a history of revitalizing distressed properties.
“Pretty much every building has been distressed in some manner. I fixed it up and turned it around and made it from a negative in the neighborhood to one of the best things in the neighborhood I think,” owner Benjamin Loehrer told the Brooklyn Center City Council at its meeting this week. “I’m very proud of that of having gyms people love and feel safe at and being able to take a bad part of a neighborhood and make it a good part of a neighborhood.”
Los Campeones has 15 other locations with most in the Twin Cities, as well as in Denver, Austin, Tex., Bismarck, N.D., and Sioux Falls, S.D. Loeher said Brooklyn Center would become the largest location.
Inside Los Campeones at its northeast Minneapolis location.
‘Old-school Gym’ Feel
Loehrer describes his gym as “old school” with an abundance of free weights and squat racks.
“It can appear intimidating at first but it’s just a gym where people work out,” said Loehrer, noting his facility doesn’t have pools, saunas or basketball courts.
According to city documents, the proposed hours of operation would be from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The fitness facility projects to have a total of 3,000 members at the Brooklyn Center location, the documents showed.
City leaders, meanwhile, are glad to have something done to the site.
“After nine years of being a vacant property, it is exciting to see it be reoccupied again,” said Brooklyn Center City Council Member Dan Jerzak.
In 2018, the bowling alley was proposed to become an event center and a light industrial redevelopment. That proposal never moved forward.
“The site has been subject to deterioration and vandalism as it has not been in operation since 2015,” noted Krystin Eldrige, Brooklyn Center associate planner, at Monday’s meeting.
In addition to building improvements, lighting and landscape improvements are also in the works.
Los Campeones plans to open by the end of October.
