Even when Elk Grove was a semi-sleepy town of 50,000 people, laments came from every soccer field and ball diamond as the need arose for indoor family-style recreation.

That's about to change – and in a big way.

The town that didn't have a bowling alley will not only get one – but also will have a fitness center, water park, extreme sports complex, synthetic ice skating rink and maybe even a gymnastics academy.

All in one spot.

Which should please residents who have been complaining about the lack of things to do with their families on online forums.

"I mean, what American town of 130 K people doesn't have a bowling alley?" asked Bill DeBussey, who lives in Laguna.

But to call the centerpiece of the emerging Elk Grove Sports Center a bowling alley would be like calling Arco Arena a basketball court.

At 200,000 square feet, almost half the size of Arco, the cavernous former JVC compact disc manufacturing plant on Laguna Boulevard will feature a Strikes Family Entertainment Center, with bowling, an arcade, corporate conference center, Coach's restaurant and bar and even synthetic ice skating. Strikes is set to open the week of Thanksgiving.

But it also will include:

• A California Family Fitness center with 55,000 feet of workout space, basketball courts and such, along with three outdoor pools and a water park area. When it opens next spring, it will be the local company's 16th complex – No. 15 is set to open Monday in Citrus Heights.

• Dream Xtreme, a locally owned extreme sports complex with a $1 million wave-making machine for surfing and body surfing; rock-climbing walls; trampolines the size of a basketball court, with 45-degree trampolines on the outside for bouncing off the walls; and paintball outside in at least one 50-foot-by-100-foot tent. Shane Carter of Elk Grove, head of a group of eight local investors, also hopes to open the complex by Thanksgiving.

• A California Sun Center tanning facility and, perhaps, a major sports training center, dance studio, gymnastics academy, roller rink and more.

For now, it is a massive structure with 33-foot-high ceilings, filled with construction workers, painters, all manner of equipment and 44 not-yet-glistening bowling lanes.

"This is the family recreation mall," said Jay Smith, a minority owner of the 25-acre property that sits about 300 yards from the Bel Air Wong Family Center, the Sacramento Asian Sports Foundation's new recreation facility, and east of Apple Inc.'s campus.

He is the local representative for Olympic Barrington Partnership, a Los Angeles-based development firm that owns the property.

Even as the economy spins toward the drain and Elk Grove restaurants and stores seem to shut down weekly, the owners and tenants of the sports complex are set to spend perhaps $25 million – not including the $15 million purchase price – to build it out.

Jim Falls, co-owner of Rocklin-based Strikes, said Smith and his partners are "way out in front" with the one-stop-shopping approach to family recreation.

"Dads can watch a ballgame, moms can work out in the gym, kids can play in the arcade … and they can all meet up for lunch or bowling," he said.

Falls admits the feasibility studies that persuaded Strikes to spend some $6 million in Elk Grove were done – not long ago – in better economic times.

But Strikes in Rocklin is doing $5.5 million a year in business, he said. And Elk Grove – with 140,000 people, a median income of some $80,000 and 2.3 kids per household – had "absolutely nothing recreational."

"More traffic goes by here," he said, waving toward Laguna Boulevard, "in a day than travels down Lonetree Boulevard (in Rocklin) in a month.

"And even in really hard times, like 1929 and '30, about the only businesses that really grew and thrived, aside from bootlegging, were theaters and movies. … People want someplace to escape from reality for a while."

Anticipation is high for the complex, which originally was one of the region's biggest commercial real estate projects of the 1990s. The JVC plant closed in 2002.

Co-owner Keith Burcham said Strikes is hiring about 90 people to staff the new center (employment information is available at www.strikesbowl-ing.com).

Birthday and team parties and corporate events – which represent 30 percent of Strikes' business in Rocklin – already are booked, Falls and Burcham said.

Elk Grove Councilman Jim Cooper was an early supporter of the project. "My thing is we need places for kids to go and things to do that are safe," he said. "I grew up on bowling and bowling leagues and I've been to Strikes in Rocklin. … I think it will have a huge impact here from day one."

Bryan Kilby, student activities director at Franklin High School, has taken seniors to Strikes in Rocklin for "Sober Grad Night" for the past two years. The class of 2009 will celebrate at the Elk Grove complex, he said. "We have a great relationship with the owners and the staff, and they do a great job monitoring the place," he said.

Sharon Anderson, who lives east of Highway 99 and doesn't have children, is just as eager for the complex to open. "Count me in," she said. "I was born in Illinois where bowling is huge.

"The complex can help make Elk Grove a destination and give us more sense of identity. With everything that is going on, if sports and recreation is what we can hang our hat on, that's just fine."

Call The Bee's Bob Walter, (916) 608-7448.