RANTOUL — Rantoul bowlers will have to look elsewhere to participate in their favorite hobby. The former Rugers bowling alley, 1568 E. Grove Ave.
, will be turned into storage units. Brandon Moore, a partner in Sandpiper Holdings, Monticello, said the company will turn the longtime bowling alley into a self-storage facility. “Rantoul is underserved for storage,” said Moore, a former Rantoul resident.
“Tenants find that they don’t have enough room in their apartments or small houses.” For Lora Runyon, the bowling alley represents a great deal of her life. She and her late husband, Don, owned and operated the business for 20 years, and before that she worked there for 17 years.
The bowling alley was opened in 1964, and Runyon said the business originally was known as Maplewood Lanes before it was purchased by Billy and Cindy Green of Champaign. They changed the name to Billy G’s Bowl. When the Runyons bought it, they changed the name to Country Tyme.
Lora Runyon said they chose to spell “Tyme” with a Y because, according to the state of Illinois, another bowling alley in the state already used the traditional spelling of “Country Time.” The building is large — 32,000 square feet. “I could never figure out why he made it so big,” she said of the original operator who built the building.
Jim Cheek, Rantoul Historical Society president, said that at one time the second floor housed a teen center. “All the kids used to go out there (to the bowling alley.
