I’m wondering if anyone knows of any general info on where chess clubs play generally; church basements? VFW clubs? At a public school? Some “lodge” or other? A restaurant/coffee shop?
Ours was in a VFW, then at a facility for the Girls Scouts, and currently in a church basement. I’m interested in find out about clubs in particular that actually own the property in which they play. 
If there are 50 chess clubs in the USA that own their own facility, I’d be very surprised. I can come up with maybe a dozen possibilities.
As to the first part of your question, the answer is probably ‘yes’. 
There are successful clubs that meet in church basements, libraries, restaurants, bookstores, community centers, senior centers, day care centers, schools, offices, houses, parks, museums, hotels, courthouses, etc.
There was even one that met on a commuter train between Chicago and Milwaukee.
It’s all local. What works in Omaha may not work in Poughkeepsie, or even in Omaha next year.
Our chess club meets at a pizza place. We gather at 7:30 p.m., and the restaurant is generally beginning to empty out. It has booths that are perfect for chess games. That way we don’t have to set up and take down tables and chairs every time.
Sometimes the players like to eat there before the club meets, so that makes the owner happy. He also gets free advertising when the chess club is mentioned in the newspaper.
In short, a restaurant with booths is a good possibility. It generally has convenient, clean restrooms as well.
The only downside is that restaurants like to close up around 9 p.m. But they are generally washing dishes and cleaning up after that, so they don’t mind if you stay on a little later.
Owning your own property is fraught with problems–upkeep, property taxes, vandalism, cleaning, etc. It is better to let someone else assume all those burdens.
I think you have hit upon the real problem facing most chess clubs. When I first started a club 25 years ago we started in a Pizza parler. The upside was that we quickly were grew to enough members to fill the banquet room and spilled out into the main dining area.
The problem was that there was a certain amount of frenzied, noisy activity in eating Pizza that did not make for a great chess atmosphere. Many of the players resented buying pizza but felt obligated to. In the end we met at the YMCA but our very existance depended on the key holder being able to come.
He often wanted to go home early (before midnight on a work day) and games were often cut short.
We are having our 1st meeting in about 20 years, tonight, at the Democratic Headquarters. It is a great place to play and, since I am the County Chairman, we have our own key. No politics tonight, just a chess ladder and the birth of a new club or rather, the rebirth of an old club.
May your knights never be lonely…
ApollyonSK (aka Steve)
I’m in a club that currently meets in the building attached to a public park, but the city that owns it is hassling us, so we’re facing this question, as well. There’s another club locally that meets at a college campus, but they have a professor as a member/ faculty adviser for their club. We used to have a group that met informally in the coffee shop section of Borders Books, but that store closed. There are all sorts of options like this if you just look around.
By the way, what’s a VFW?
–Fromper
VFW = Veterans of Foreign Wars
Here in Phoenix we have clubs that meet in bookstores (Bookmans in Mesa, and Borders in Paradise Valley), one that meets at a recreation center (Pyle Recreation Center in Tempe), and one place that has their own property that is used primarily for their scholastic chess business named Chess Emporium.
I just read an article about how many VFW posts are having to close their doors here in Ohio. It sounds like this would be a great opportunity for a chess club to help a VFW AND aquire a playing site. Contact your local VFW, Moose, Elks or any other group that owns it’s own building. Many of these groups are facing declining membership, and could use the publicity and $ that may come with hosting a weekly group.