Longtime residents have fond memories of swimming, bowling, driving bumper cars, eating, drinking, and more at Celebrity. Do you know there’s a connection to Walt Disney and other celebrities?
As reported by Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer in The Know - https://www.denverpost.com/.../disney-colorado-connections/ - Walt Disney “was one of the original investors in Celebrity Sports Center, an indoor recreation center that opened in 1960 in Glendale, near South Colorado Boulevard and East Kentucky Avenue. The seven-acre site put an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an 80-lane bowling alley under the same roof, along with midway games, bumper cars, a shooting gallery, slot car racing, billiards tables, and food and drink options including an English-style pub, a cocktail lounge, and a dark-paneled, high-end eatery. And it lived up to its “celebrity” name: Besides Walt and Roy Disney, other investors included comedians Jack Benny and George Burns, crooners Bing Crosby and Burl Ives, and TV host Art Linkletter. The Disney brothers bought out the other investors not long after the center opened, with Disney becoming the sole owner.
The first in a proposed nationwide chain of indoor, all-weather recreation centers, Celebrity also was used as a training ground for employees of Walt Disney World and the never-built Mineral King ski resort. But the indoor funland stayed local to Denver, with Disney eventually selling the business in 1979. The complex shut its doors in 1994.”
Here’s more (including more great images and original newspaper articles) from Laura Ruttum Senturia on the Denver Public Library’s website. The image is from this story. https://history.denverlibrary.org/.../celebrity-sports...