Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - Both local golf domes came down as a result of the Buffalo Blizzard Christmas weekend; one on Wehrle Drive in Williamsville and the other being the Paddock Chevrolet Golf Dome in Tonawanda.
According to Tonawanda Town Supervisor Joe Emminger, the dome collapsed on Christmas Eve evening around 7:45 p.m.
"There was an equipment malfunction, one of the blowers appeared to malfunction and it deflated. It didn't it didn't rip apart like the Wehrle Golf Dome. It was just a deflation caused by an equipment malfunction."
However, there was a tear on the exterior of the dome, that they're looking to fix, "The skin of the dome did tear, but when it was coming down, when it was being deflated because of the winds. Our contractor on the on the golf dome was out visiting the site today (Thursday) and they are going to be getting back to us in the next couple of days, tomorrow or early next week, assessing what can be done, hopefully, we'll be able to inflate it, at least on a temporary basis before we can fix them permanently so we get the dome up as quick as possible. That's our goal," Emminger says.
"There's a big tear, I would say 50 to 60 feet. Then there's some minor, you know, pokes and prods throughout it. But that's the major concern is the tear leading from the entrance out towards the hitting area," said Josh Edholm owner of The Grill and Sportzone connected to the dome.
Edholm says there's a little water damage in the restaurant but other than that, they're haven't been any outages, "The building is attached to the dome. So everything from our standpoint with the exception of one part of our dining room is really separate from the dome our one dining room goes in there, kind of a glass enclosed structure. We call it our atrium. That's in the dome. Right now though, it's flapped right over the top of our atrium and we're a little exposed to the elements out there."
However business is running like usual at the restaurant and sports simulator facilities, "We actually have a couple of good days. Wednesday was our customer holiday party, so we went ahead with that and we had a lot of our regulars in, but it definitely is going to be a blow to traffic for us for sure," Edholm says.
The last couple years have been rough for a lot of businesses, as Buffalo now has endured a pandemic and a deadly blizzard, but now having the dome down may present another obstacle for the traffic of the family-owned business, "We're still open. We're being as optimistic as possible. We're trying to run business as normal. We still have our simulators and everything. We do have a big space in the warehouse, which we actually started today converting into like a cornhole arena, so that we can run some cornhole leagues or something just to get some more traffic through the doors and try to get through. It was pretty bad timing from our end. The dome was down before COVID when they repaired it and put a new one up for revisions. They repaired it, but they put a brand new one up and then we had two years of the pandemic basically for this season and we're hoping this year to get back on track," Edholm says.