Story by Paul Brennan at Little Village Independent Iowa News
November 24, 2025
Spare Me Bowling Arcade is closing. The downtown Iowa City bowling alley will shut its door for the last time on Wednesday night, SpareMe announced Friday on social media. It will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. until then.
Heather Soseman, SpareMe’s general manager, told Little Village she was told informally last Wednesday the two-story bowling alley in the Chauncey would be closing. She was officially informed on Thursday.
“I was utterly shocked, and beyond disappointed,” she said.
Soseman was hired by Hawkeye Hotels to work on SpareMe in 2019, two years before its doors opened to the public in August 2021. Hawkeye Hotels is a Coralville-based property development and management company with hotels in 23 states. It also owns Hotel Chauncey, a 51-room Hilton hotel that is located on the floors above the two-story bowling alley.
“I picked out the flooring, every single video and arcade game,” Soseman said. “I built the menus, I built the team.”
In April, GreenState Credit Union foreclosed on the Chauncey and five other properties owned by developer Marc Moen and business associates. The Chauncey and three of the other buildings were slated to be sold at a Nov. 18 sheriff’s auction, but failed to attract anyone willing to meet the minimum required bid of $24 million.
Soseman said she didn’t know if the uncertainty surrounding the Chauncey since April had any impact on the decision to close SpareMe, because it had a lease that any landlord would have to honor. SpareMe was entering the holiday season, its busiest time of the year, when the decision came down.
“I was under the impression that we weren’t going anywhere,” she said.
Over the years, SpareMe has been a welcoming space in downtown Iowa City. It has hosted innumerable parties, corporate functions, as well as families and friends just looking for fun.
“We did a lot of great work with the community,” Soseman said. “Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Arc. We have folks with special needs who come in once a week, and we were the main outing for the week for some of them.”
