Today the building is known as being part of the former Kerr Beverage property, but it started out as the home of Baetz Dairy Bar, an offshoot of Lorain's Baetz Dairy. The ad above from the Lorain Journal announces the Grand Opening on June 10, 1949 – 65 years ago this month.
My mother remembers getting ice cream there in the 1950s.
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| September 1949 ad |
I drove past it this past weekend to see if the building had undergone any changes since Rockwell Metals Company LLC purchased it. The new owners have a small sign up, but otherwise it looks the same. It's still a great looking building with a lot of style.
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| The view this past weekend |
2 comments:
Dan,
I worked here from 1973 to 1984 for Penton Imports Company where we distributed the Penton Motorcycles and Hi-Point Products. We put an addition on the east side that we used for our semi trucks and later built Hi-point Trailers. We kept the wood floors in excellent shape and they could still be used for skating. Later we rented the front to George Roth Industries as we didn't need it. When we moved to Amherst we made a deal with Kerr Beverage where we took our building and we moved into their old building. They built a new cooler in the back to handle Coors Beer that they received a distributorship for. If you remember Coors was expanding into the east and a popular beer ,but it was required to be kept refrigerated. It was a really great building with plenty of room and access.
Hi Matt!
Thanks for posting your information about the history of the building. I've pretty much neglected the years after the Arena closed on this blog, and I'm glad you brought up the fact that Penton Imports Motorcycles called the building home for a number of years.
You're right about the floors of the former Arena being well taken care of. When I toured the building with Realtor Bill Latrany, you could see that they could be still be used for skating. He came pretty close to selling the building to a skating association but it didn't work out.
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