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Show , ikvSvAv,v,'i'Vlrrr. ! jjir? : :;"':,.,, J--- gss - i ' ..1,1! II . fill jllM photo by Jell Jensen A workman puts the final touches on the island bar downstairs in the renovated club. Spacious 'new' Club to reopen to drop off, and the crowd was getting harder to control. He said other than the new look, not much has changed about the Club. The capacity has grown, from around 60 to almost 200. A larger staff has been hired, about 25 people. But those chanees, Stemler said, are more functional. The Club will still be the same old Club to the faithful. This first reopening is planned to be a "soft opening," Stemler said. Once the bugs are worked out, a grand opening will be held, with a membership party and other hoopla. by Randy Ilanskat It is the open space that strikes you about the Club, the new Club, which is due to reopen today. No longer is space consumed by booths downstairs, or with an office upstairs. Now it's wide open. And that is basically what Mark Stemler, co-owner of the Club, had in mind when renovations were planned for the well-known local watering hole. "We wanted to have the best utilization of space, while at the same time keeping the same flavor of the place," he explained Tuesday night as final preparations were being made to reopen. He said the Club actually was two separate buildings. The northern half with the bar was built in 1898, the southern half with the booths in 1978. Even though there was the illusion of a single building, Stemler said everying was separate: gas, electric, water, the works. The renovation has now merged all that into a single entity. Gone are the booths, gone is the shuffleboard table, gone is the dividing wall. The new Club has a large single room for its ground floor. It is a room reminiscent of a Victorian parlor. An old-fashioned print wallpaper covers the top half of the walls; the lower half boasts dark wood. In the center of the room is a large island bar which is sure to be surrounded by thirsty patrons. Along the walls and around the bar are marble shelves to hold drinks, and brass rails. Barstools will provide the seating, unless customers would rather stand. Simply taking the trip upstairs has changed. Where the stairway was once a single flight going straight up, now it has a lefthand about-face at the halfway point. Also gone from the upstairs are the bathrooms (patrons can use the downstairs facilities) and the office. The removal of those obstructions has made the upstairs like the downstairs lots of open space. The difference is that the upstairs will be filled with tables and chairs. On the walls upstairs is a maroon print wallpaper, with gray trim. The bar itself remains much the same, but has been refurbished. In fact, Stemler said, just about everything in the Club has been refurbished. Yes, even the bison and elk heads. They have been made like new by a taxidermist. All wall hangings have been reframed, and some new items have been purchased pur-chased to fill the space. All in all, Stemler said, about $200,000 has gone into the remodeling remodel-ing effort. Most of the work has been done by local craftsmen, he added. "It was time for a change." He said the Club's business was starting |