Hoang Cao is making a big bet on bowling in Mandeville.
Cao, who turned around a bowling alley on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish, is spending around $2 million to refurbish and reopen the shuttered Tiffany Lanes on La. 22 in Mandeville.
The business will be renamed Paradise Alley when it opens in the coming months and will be the second bowling alley in St. Tammany Parish, joining the alley in Slidell.
“I think the area is primed,” Cao said, noting that the alley has been closed for a year or more. “There’s a need for family entertainment.”
The refurbished Paradise Alley will have 32 lanes geared to league play during the week and open bowling on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday and Saturday nights could also feature live music, he said.
“I’d like to open sometime in September,” Cao said recently but added that it would depend on the various permits the business must obtain.
Cao spent 17 years in the banking business and also builds houses. This marks his second foray into the bowling business — in 2016, he was involved in a $2.5 million renovation of Westside Lanes, a 20-lane alley in Harvey.
“I learned a lot from that,” he said. “This (Mandeville) is almost double in size.”
Hoang Cao is pictured at Westside Bowling Lanes in Harvey on Wednesday, August 14, 2024. (Staff photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune)
Cao said Paradise Alley will fill a niche, adding a third bowling center on the northshore between Bowling USA in Slidell and Tangi Lanes in Hammond.
He’s leasing the 35,000-square-foot building and will invest more than $2 million in the improvements.
“I pretty much gutted everything,” Cao said. “And I did put new lanes in. And the drop-down ceilings are gone.”
Across the U.S., bowling alleys are still emerging from the hard hit of the pandemic.
The New Orleans area has a long history with bowling, which exploded in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, and featured such iconic alleys as Bowlarama, Sugar Bowl Lanes, Paradise Lanes, and, of course, Mid-City Lanes, which would later became Rock ‘n’ Bowl, as much a live music venue as a bowling alley.
Through the early- and mid-2000s, numerous stories began appearing in the national media wondering if bowling was on the way out. But Cao said a good bowling center is still an attraction.
“Bowling has evolved,” he said. “You have to offer more.”
That can range from newer, more open bowling facilities to upgraded lanes, food offerings and entertainment.
The food at Paradise Alley won’t vary much from standard bowling alley fare — pizza, burgers, fries — but will be tastier, Cao said.
“It’s tough to change the mindset of what bowling alley food is,” he said with a laugh.
Cao said he anticipates having live music or a DJ on weekends, but said he doesn’t expect the open hours to stretch past midnight.