PHOTOS: View historic images from the bowling alley

WATCH: Video from Elitch Lanes on Monday

This was supposed to be Elitch Lanes’ last week on Tennyson Street — its home since 1952 — not its last week in existence. Pushed out by redevelopment, the venerable bowling alley was expecting to leave its longtime digs at 3825 Tennyson St. and move a few miles northwest to Western Bowl in Arvada.

However, talks broke down in the eleventh hour.

By Sunday, the bowling alley was in liquidation mode.

“I’m trying not to get too depressed,” Elitch Lanes owner Cal Eichinger said Monday morning as workers dismantled the alley, removing pairs of cream plastic seats and hauling out the blue metal bar counters.

Eichinger, a bowling industry veteran, has owned Elitch Lanes for the past 13 years, operating it in a leased 21,000-square-foot building near the intersection of West 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street.

The northwest Denver neighborhood around that corner is in the throes of redevelopment and change, and the Elitch Lanes building, which swapped hands last year, soon will become a Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage.

Eichinger thought he had a deal with Western Bowl owner Bruce Rahmani, a Denver hotel and motel owner. He planned to close on Tennyson on Sunday night and to begin managing Western Bowl, 10000 Ralston Road, under the Elitch Lanes name.

“We fully anticipated moving,” Eichinger said. “We had a management contract, and it kind of blew up Saturday.”

Western Bowl’s loyal regulars were not fond of the impending name change, Rahmani said. Longtime league members were fiercely loyal to the Western Bowl history and name and said so in person and in writing.

“We decided really there was no reason to change the name,” he said. “My customers would be unhappy if I did that.”

As one legacy lives on, another quickly fell into demise. The short notice forced Elitch Lanes to host an impromptu going-away party Sunday night and then throw itself into full liquidation mode.

Elitch Lanes’ Facebook page practically became an auction house, bearing photos of posters, wall art and other memorabilia up for sale.

On Monday, former employees and customers came by their old haunt — now in a frenzied state of gutting — to buy bar stools, bowling balls and Elitch Lanes shirts.

The 100 balls and collection of bowling shoes that remained Monday afternoon likely will be sold to customers, said Sue Eichinger, who ran the alley with her husband. The Elitch Lanes Facebook page will be updated with available memorabilia, she said.

As much as it pained him to shutter Elitch Lanes, Cal Eichinger said the price of land grew too high for the local bowling alley.

“There’s no other center to move to,” Eichinger said.

And while the local bowling house faced competition from deeper-pocketed chains with multiple metro Denver locations, including Lucky Strike and AMF, he said he would restart and reopen Elitch Lanes in a heartbeat.

“I’m not ready for retirement,” he said.

Elitch Lanes was profitable, and it was a gathering place for a cross-section of residents, he said.

It also holds fond memories for many people, including Jim Davies, 71, of Longmont.

As a boy, Davies would frequent the Elitch family’s bowling alley as his Cub Scout pack’s den mother lived only four blocks away.

“I remember the smell of it,” he said, recalling the aromas of lane oil and wood. “Every bowling alley I walked in from there reminded me of Elitch Lanes.”

Davies got a job at IBM and moved out of Denver in 1972, but hearing about the closures of Elitch Lanes and, before that, Elitch Gardens and businesses such as Herb’s Barbershop saddened the “old north Denver boy.”

“It’s just more and more things chipping away at something you really loved,” he said.

Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/aliciawallace