Three years ago, new owners took over 50-year-old neighborhood favorite Jupiter Bowl at Jupiter Lane and Garland Road, pumped in hundreds of thousands of dollars overhauling the building and equipment, and re-opened the facility hoping that local ownership would make the business profitable again.

As of June 3, however, the owner says he will be “handing the keys over to the bank” due to his inability to obtain an additional $200,000 to repair the building’s roof, HVAC and “other building issues”.

Sign up for our newsletter!

* indicates required

All of this information is courtesy of a note to customers sitting on Jupiter Bowl’s counter (read the two-page note in pdf format). Briefly summarizing, the notes blame two things for the potential closure: inflexible bank financing terms and significant crime in the area.

The bank financing issue makes sense, although it’s easy to make the “bank” a bogeyman these days even when a problem has more to do with cash flow than surly lenders. But what’s more interesting in the letter is the owner’s finger-pointing at neighborhood crime as a culprit.

According to the letter, there were 14 “reported” vehicle break-ins (“and numerous unreported”) in the Jupiter Bowl parking lot from Jan. 1 through April 15, which the owner goes on to point out are more crimes than have occurred at his other bowling property, Bowl-A-Rama in Rowlett, in seven years of operating the Rowlett alley.

All in all, that’s not the kind of language (especially coming from the building’s management) that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about visiting the property now or in the future, even if the owner somehow worked out the financing details.