Saturday, April 18, 2009

New car lot in south Greenville? Update: No - building is for rent.

Saturday morning several workers were cleaning up the building most recently occupied by Powell's Auto Sales (on Dayton Road, immediately south of Speedway; north of the DP&L building).

The workers said they were preparing the property for a new car lot. We'll try to find out what's going and and let you know.

On a side note, there's a rumor going around that this place used to be some sort of restaurant where people stayed in their cars. And there was also something about intercoms, root beer, and roller skates. Can anybody shed some light on this?

** A reader emailed these comments: "Yes, it used to be Ferd's A & W Root Beer Stand, owned by Ferd Schwinn - I was a "car hop" there in............1970 - and it was fun place to work... the roller skates were before my time, however, we did have one gal who would skate around."

** Update: The building is presently owned by Bish Properties, LLC and is actively seeking a renter.

3 comments:

  1. It absolutely was a resteraunt, around 1985-86-87...it was called Devors...I know because I worked there in school. They served hamburgers/hotdogs and fries...similar to Jims, same sort of style. It was owned by the Devor family that owned The Front Street In.

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  2. I remember the orange and black building - from the A&W in the 70's. I think Neil's A&W in Union City is one of the few 'old rootbeer stands' still around.

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  3. The building at 1380 Dayton Road was built by my father, Chalmer Bish back around 1959. He had acquired the A & W Root Beer franchise. Dad ran the business for a couple of years before my mother (Alice) said no more. She got tired of the help running out of various things or not showing up for work. Dad sold the A & W business to Ferd Schwenn in the early 60's. After Ferd, there were several other attempts at restaurants before it became Lyons Motors in 1994. Powell's Auto Sales took over the building in 1999 until 2008. The building is presently owned by Bish Properties, LLC and is actively seeking a renter.

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