By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

A Hooksett-based charity group is reeling in anticipation of losing thousands of dollars of bingo revenue after failed negotiations to continue a lease with new owners of Manchester’s Amoskeag Bingo Center.

“We rely on every penny we get from the bingo,” said Wayne Cochrane, director of Prayer Hall Inc., one of several area charities that’s having its lease terminated at the end of August. “That’s one of our primary money sources.”

Prayer Hall is a nonprofit group that runs the Hooksett Food Pantry, and provides affordable housing in Manchester and Allenstown to people in need. The nonreligious group is based in Hooksett, and has hosts bingo twice a week at the Amoskeag Bingo Center, on McGregor Street in Manchester.

Cochrane said about 85 percent of the group’s revenue comes from bingo.

“If we don’t get that funding we get from bingo, we’re going to be in serious trouble,” he said. “Every day now is just another day we’re getting further and further behind.”

Cochrane said the bingo center’s new owner, West Side Bingo, was hoping to take about 50 percent of the cut of revenue from the charities’ bingo operations, and collect $4 per bingo player.

Other charities facing the same situation after the failed negotiation include Goffstown’s UpReach Therapeutic Riding Center, the Catholic War Veterans and Manchester’s Jutras Post 43 American Legion.

Cochrane said representatives of the charities felt the bingo center’s new owners were asking too exorbitant a cut.

“There are poor people who all this money goes to, and he’s just capitalizing on them,” he said.

Cochrane, who’s also the manager of the Hooksett Food Pantry on Route 28, said he’s already tempering operations there.

The organization provides meals to about 1,200 people from throughout the area each month.

“I feed anybody from anywhere in need,” said Cochrane, who joined the pantry in 1996 after his stepmother, Dorothy Seay, began the operation by storing food for people in her garage.

Cochrane said Prayer Hall volunteers have already begun to look for potential new venues to host bingo operations, but said he’s learned from the group’s time in Manchester that “location is everything in bingo.”

Cochrane said he’s confident Prayer Hall again, but said the questions now involve where and when.

“I’ve told everyone this could be a good thing,” he said. “It’s amazing how charitable people can get even in the bad times.”

Cochrane said he’s still grateful for all the private food contributions the Hooksett pantry receives from groups including Boy Scouts, Hannaford, Curves, Merchants Motors and Wal-Mart, but said an impending lack of cash flow may necessitate more cutbacks.

“I’m sure something good will happen,” Cochrane said. “People are amazing.”