Tradewinds Update

No doubt about it – my effort to determine the location of the Tradewinds supper club on Griswold in Elyria during the mid-1980s is stirring up a lot of interest. I received several emails from regular readers of my blog trying to help.

Local historian Matt Weisman remembers eating there, and believes it was located on Griswold on the east side of Route 57, ironically near the location of the old Sveden House building (which I wrote about last week). It's certainly possible, since the addresses on Griswold are so scrambled that it is virtually impossible to rule out anything.

Regular blog reader and research contributor Rick Kurish has furnished me with the names of the owners of the Tradewinds. Two of them are deceased for sure; consequently, I've reached out to members of their family via Facebook, but I haven't heard back yet. (I'm hoping that my Facebook messages aren't going to languish in their "Other" folders. I've had people find messages from me in that folder years after I sent them!)

And the webmaster of the Oberlin in the Past Facebook page is asking around, and even sent me a photo of a Griswold Road building that might have housed the restaurant.

But the research continues at the library. I've cross-referenced all phone numbers associated with the business to no avail. It's like they were never even hooked up.

It seems that prior to the Tradewinds, the only business associated with the 41274 Griswold Road address was a vineyard/farm in the 1970s. The classified ad below ran in the Chronicle-Telegram on August 31, 1970.

I did discover that besides being listed in the 'Restaurants' category, Tradewinds was also listed in the 'Caterers' category of the 1986 Elyria phone book (below).

I've also made the trek to the Elyria Public Library, expecting to solve the mystery through its collection of city directories. But it turns out that the library's collection of Elyria directories is even more anemic than that of the Lorain Public Library; there are no Elyria directories at all from 1980 to 1986!

Although it appears that the Tradewinds wasn't around very long (since it was just in the 1985 and 86 phone books), the idea of the restaurant was much older. This May 17, 1980 article that appeared on the front page of the Chronicle-Telegram (below) makes reference to it. It seems to infer that the restaurant was related to the large Cassell development project that stretched back along Leona Street north of Griswold on the west side of Route 57.

The restaurant was going to cost a quarter of a million dollars!

Anyway, we love a mystery on this blog, and we'll have an answer sooner or later. I'm just wondering if the elaborate Tiki-inspired building was even built.