Work on downtown building's facade reveals ties to country music song

Workers removing portions of the facade of the Burt’s Theater building downtown Tuesday morning uncovered signage that promoted one of the building’s famous former tenants: the Country Palace.

The Country Palace was the second bar and live music venue Toledo businessman Duane Abbajay operated in the building, his first being the Peppermint Club. However, it was the first venture that helped inspire a hit country music song.

According to A Bar In Toledo: The Untold Story of a Mafia Front Man and a Grammy-Winning Song , written by Dominic Vaiana and Mr. Abbajay’s daughter, Stephanie Abbajay, the elder Abbajay opened the Country Palace in the 1970s.

Considered Toledo’s first Urban Cowboy-style honkytonk, it was in the Country Palace, one day in 1974, that Nashville songwriter Hal Bynum found himself watching a domestic tiff develop between a husband and wife. Mr. Bynum wrote about the encounter “at a bar in Toledo” in his song “Lucille,” which Kenny Rogers took to the top of the charts in 1977.

Built in 1897 as a vaudeville theater, Burt’s Theater, at 725 Jefferson Ave., has been home to a variety of enterprises over the the past 127 years, even serving as a parking garage. Most recently it was known as the home of Caesar’s Show Bar, a drag bar renowned for its splashy female-impersonator shows. The bar closed in 2010.

The current owners of the building, IBC Inc., received a pair of grants — a $40,000 Facade Improvement grant and a $75,000 White Box grant — through the city’s Vibrancy Initiative Project. The awards were announced in May and were part of more than $830,000 in funds awarded by the city for a variety of projects.

The White Box grant is designed to help property owners bring vacant first-floor commercial spaces up to current codes to create a “white box” space ready for customization and occupancy by a business.

The grant reimburses 70 percent of the eligible interior renovation expenses required to meet current state and local building code, fire safety code, and accessibility requirements. The minimum reimbursement is $25,000 and the maximum is $75,000.

The Facade Improvement grant provides funding to conduct a facade condition assessment and conceptual design services for a commercial, industrial, or mixed-use building.

In May, the building’s owners announced plans to add 15 apartments to the upper floors, with a commercial space on the first floor, according to a post on IBC’s Facebook page. Efforts to reach a representative of IBC on Tuesday for additional comment were unsuccessful.