Bingo Hall Calls It Quits Red Cross Closes Doors After 18 Years

The colorful, cavernous steel building at Sullivan and Sprague lies silent now, except for a small salvage operation to make way for a retail outlet.

American Red Cross Bingo in the Spokane Valley is D-E-A-D.

Unstable revenues and potential threats from Indian gaming forced the Red Cross’s board of directors out of the game last Thursday after 18 years.

The move stunned the 22 employees and hundreds of regular players who thought a relocation was in the works, not a shutdown.

“I’ll probably sit home and watch ball games and eat myself to death,” said 71-year-old Chet Utecht, a Valley native who spent three nights a week at the Red Cross hall.

The hall offered four sessions a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and drew an average of 550 players.

Since the Red Cross moved its game to the former Two Swabbies retail building five years ago, Utecht doubts he and his wife, Beatrice, 72, missed an evening session.

“It was a good pastime for us,” he said.

The Red Cross recently sold the mammoth building to a retailer and had hoped to lease another site, but three locations fell through at the last minute.

Revenues, while good some months, were unreliable and a constant source of budgeting uncertainty, so board members voted to drop the business, said Red Cross spokeswoman Joyce Cameron.

Board members also believed bingo detracted from the organization’s disaster relief mission, and they feared passage of Initiative 651 on the November ballot, she said. The measure would allow full-scale tribal casinos and draw customers from non-profit agencies like the Red Cross, Cameron said.

“I’d rather decide right now than wait until we’re losing money to get out of it,” she said. “But it was a thoughtful process. We feel really bad for the employees.”

Some workers will be paid through Oct. 31 during cleanup. The shutdown leaves five large bingo operations in Spokane County.

“Thursday was a very difficult day,” assistant manager Johna Butterfield said. “We were all in tears.”

Two white placards on the front doors say it all. “Sorry: Closed.”

One bingo table is scrawled with felt marker messages: “God Bless Red Cross,” “We Love You!” and “You will always be in our hearts.”

A few bingo cards litter the floor. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air.

The building will be gutted by the new owner, whose name was not disclosed, and then divided into small shops.

“We’re very upset,” one employee said. “Winter’s coming. I have kids to feed. We’re all worried.

“And we feel for the customers. A lot of these people were widowed senior citizens. This was the center of their life.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo