Coronavirus shutdown forces charitable Sacramento bingo hall to close its doors for good
After raising more than $50 million for community projects in the past few decades, Florin Road Bingo is closing its doors permanently because it’s unable to continue to pay its mounting operating costs while coronavirus restrictions kept people away.
Sacramento Consolidated Charities, which runs Florin Road Bingo, had to continue paying utilities bills and other costs while it was ordered to shutdown for the past several months to prevent further spread of the coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19.
“We simply ran out of cash. We don’t have enough money to keep the building and the business alive,” Kevin Beers, the charity’s board president, told The Sacramento Bee on Thursday.
As one of the few remaining charitable bingo halls in the Sacramento region, Florin Road Bingo raised money for the Valley Hi-North Laguna Library, the Pannell Meadowview Community Center and the rebuilding of Manuel Silva Field in Meadowview, according to a news release announcing the hall’s closure.
Beers said closing the hall was a tough decision, knowing how many community organizations relied on its fundraising help. He said Florin Road Bingo donated about $250,000 a year to community groups.
“We’re in the business of giving money to charities; not using that money to pay utilities and bills,” Beers said. ‘We’ve reached the end of our rope.”
Sacramento Consolidated Charities dissolving
Beers said Sacramento Consolidated Charities was in the process of dissolving, trying to sell all of its remaining assets to pay off its creditors. For the past several months, its doors remained closed to bingo players.
The bingo hall was opened for about two weeks in late June as some coronavirus restrictions were loosened, Beers said. But the COVID-19 infection rate climbed soon after, and the bingo hall closed again.
Florin Road Bingo worked closely with Sacramento County officials at looking for coronavirus rules that could allow the hall to reopen safely, such as social distancing and masks.
But Beers said the bingo hall was included in a category with cardrooms, which were not allowed to reopen as COVID-19 numbers continued to surge. He was told that keeping bingo players inside the hall for five to six hours would be an immense risk. He also said the bingo hall also was not allowed to set-up tables for bingo games outside in its parking lot.
“Keeping players, staff and volunteers safe has been a top priority for us, but it came with a big price tag,” Beers said in the news release. “If we can’t play bingo, we can’t support the charities that rely on us (or pay the bills).”
GoFundMe and drive-in bingo didn’t work out
Even as Sacramento County moved into a less restrictive tier recently as infection rates dropped, Beers said 25% capacity restrictions or 100 players wouldn’t keep the bingo hall afloat after several months of depleting its savings during the pandemic.
“We were already burning up what revenue we had,” Beers told The Bee. “We didn’t want to bet what little we had left on things getting better.”
The bingo hall made a couple of “last-ditch efforts” to raise money to get the charitable organization over the hump, Beers said. They started a GoFundMe account online and organized a drive-in bingo, but both efforts failed to draw enough interest and donors were given refunds, Beers said.
Raised money for scholarships and youth sports
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began impacting California in mid-March, Florin Road Bingo had hundreds of volunteers each year who donated thousands of hours to support the hall. One of those volunteers was Larry Gury, whose parents, Dick and Lynn Gury, started the charitable effort that eventually created the bingo hall.
The Gurys wanted to help their son’s marching band at John F. Kennedy High School, which eventually led Dick Gury to look into the idea of starting charitable bingo games. Nonprofit volunteers could earn donations for their favorite causes by donating time to help run the contests.
“A lot of great memories there and there great people my parents worked with,” Larry Gury told The Bee. “They saw an opportunity for everyone.”
Florin Road Bingo started more than 40 years ago as a nonprofit, charitable bingo hall to help raise money for the Kennedy marching band. Because of that success, the bingo hall expanded its reach over the past three decades and generated millions of dollars for local youth and senior programs, civic organizations, religious groups and community projects, according to the news release.
For instance, Florin Road Bingo raised money for the Florin Road Foundations’ scholarship program at Luther Burbank High School and the Sacramento Breeze Softball Program.
“It’s saddening,” Larry Gury said Thursday after learning of the hall’s closure. “They created so many opportunities for local organizations.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 7:27 PM.
