How Day's Bowl-a-Dome has risen from the ashes
Reporter Evan J. Pretzer spoke to the owner to find out more.
When word got around that Day’s Bowl-A-Dome in Wausau reopened after months of rebuilding/rehabbing from a February fire, I thought there was a story there. What goes through a business owner’s mind? What does it take to rebuild? What does that look like?
So, I sent reporter Evan J. Pretzer to cover the story. And I think he did a good job getting those details and telling the story of reopening a business after such a tremendous setback. Today, read the story of Day’s rise from the ashes, and Pretzer’s first story for The Wausonian.
Five months ago, Dean Day got a call that made him sweat on a winter’s night. He worried that his family’s long legacy was gone.
The bad news that fire had wrecked his generations-old business came on Feb. 15, 2025. But there was no doubt that he would rebuild, and the reconstruction began shortly after. This month, the business reopened its doors after months of reconstruction.
The 66-year-old is the third-generation proprietor of Day’s Bowl-A-Dome. The West Stewart Avenue fixture opened for business in 1946 when Day’s grandfather, Hobart, and father, Russell, purchased the building. Initially, it was known as the Stettin Bowl-A-Dome, but in 1948, the Days bought out their partner, Alfie Behrendt, and changed the name to what it is now known as following annexation into the city of Wausau.
“With the fire that night, I was wondering how bad it was going to be,” Day says. “There was a pit in my stomach at the least. Before they had the fire out, I was back in my Jeep and calling my insurance agent. Andy Bartelt of Bartelt Insurance. Before they had the fire out, he had already started doing my claim. That’s a pretty good agent at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. He talked me into having a Cadillac plan 20 years ago. I had insurance to cover repairs, employee pay, all of that.”
The fire began in the workshop behind the lanes where customers come to bowl. While history is filled with numerous other businesses closing completely in the aftermath of similar accidents, part of why Day’s Bowl-A-Dome was able to endure was that the room itself trapped the flames and heat due to its concrete construction.
The smoke, however, was another story.
Burned tools and machining parts in the space made a toxic black smoke plume, which tainted all of the building Day and his family have developed over the decades, including the lanes, the bar and dining areas. Nothing was spared, and everything had to be replaced through the involvement of a team of more than 10 different vendors.
Ozone machines and scaffolding for painters filled the area where years of robust bowling leagues that have held their matches since the building opened. Day felt like a contractor himself sometimes when wrangling every different group.
While this would make some quit, he couldn’t leave his work family.
“Honestly, never,” he says when asked if he’d considered throwing in the towel. “Quitting did not cross my mind, and I found ways of moving on.”
The community support was overwhelming.
We have been part of the community for a long time. If I get a request to give to non-profit organizations, I do it, and so the number of people who offered to come help clean was in the hundreds. Friends and customers alike were popping in and anxious to have us reopen. I missed seeing them, and I feed off of people. When they smile and enjoy themselves, it is like a drug.
With the restoration valued at more than $1 million complete, it is not clear what else will come to the first place to have held trivia nights via the NTN Buzztime, Inc. broadband network in Wausau beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Day added two 20-foot video screens as part of the restoration period, which ended with a reopening at the beginning of July. Automatic lane bumpers have replaced the old inflatable versions, which were once in lanes to prevent balls from falling into the gutter. The changes only help the legacy launched long ago to continue building.
“This place is an institution in Wausau,” Daniel Okite, a bartender at Day’s Bowl-A-Dome, says.
“I have been hanging here since I was a kid. So have a lot of people … it is, it’s just the spot.”
More about Day’s Bowl-A-Dome, Inc. can be found on their Facebook page.
Evan J. Pretzer is a freelance writer and reporter. He can be reached at evanjpretzer.com.
Or at x.com/EvanJPretzer
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