Chuck E. Cheese’s, the pizza and games parlor that hosted birthday parties for generations of youngsters and their patient parents, closed all its approximately 600 locations early in the pandemic. In June, its parent company filed for bankruptcy protection.
In the filing, the company said that only thirty-four of the closings were permanent, and its Facebook page still describes the Ann Arbor location as “temporarily closed.” But in mid-December, a crew was packing boxes of plastic trinkets and fixtures onto a truck, and the cotton candy machine was stashed in a dumpster.