Lorain Skate World

A few weeks back I touched on the demolition of the historic motel's along the lakefront on West Erie Avenue in Lorain and briefly mentioned that one of the remaining (and still thriving) businesses in the are was the Lorain Skate World.

My mother recently shared an article with me that she found in the Lorain Journal about Skate World that you can check out here. If you don't feel like doing any of that reading nonsense I will give you the abridged version. This year Skate World is celebrating their 40th anniversary and are having a skate night where the original organ (which has remained on site all these years) will be brought back to life by the original organ player and Lorain native Johnny Sharp.

My mom also mentioned that before Skate World there was a motel and a restaurant on the site. Of course this peaked my interest, so I had to investigate. The motel was absorbed into the structure of the skating rink and if you look closely you can still tell where the rooms would have been (unfortunately I do not have a shot of this).

So I did some digging and found out that there was actually a freight trucking company that first resided on this lot. The company was called Ed Blahay Transportation Company. The business was founded sometime in the 1920's and expanded rapidly, apparently venturing into the motel and restaurant industry as you can see in the below shot from the 1950's. The building to the far right I believe may have been some kind of general store.

(Picture courtesy of Lorain Historical Society)

The long building on the left is the motel known as Ed's Place. In the center is the garage for the trucks and the restaurant located in the front of the same building. The restaurant was called Benny's Restaurant (later know as Tiffany's Steakhouse) and is now closed, although the building remains. It appears that there is a bunch of houses on the property as well. Not much information exists about any of these places online except for this photograph and some old phone directories (but I'll spare you of those).

Current aerial view of the same area. (Google Maps)

In the above picture the motel would have been located on the left along the mobile home park. The building in the center is the former truck garage and restaurants. The building on the right is currently a second-hand store, but I am not sure that it always was as it clearly existed in the 1950's shot from above. The interesting part of the "now" view is the remnants of the old parking lot behind the truck garage portion of the complex leading up to where the houses would have been.

This is a Google "Street View" of the former restaurant/garage in the foreground and Skate World (pre-face lift) in the back.

Above is a picture I took from further down of Mary's Trading Post. From the look of their website they may only be an ebay store at this point. There is an old sign at the front of the building that reads "Garwells". Perhaps this was the name of the store when owned by the truck company?

I guess Ed's Place, Benny's Restaurant and (the supposed) Garwells were just a precursor to a plague that would slowly consume the rest of West Erie Avenue's businesses (minus Skate World) due to the building of State Route 2 to the south. As far as I can tell the complex was bought by Skate World in the early 70's and built right over the motel. The restaurant (in it's many incarnations) lasted until the mid 90's. 

So if you are free on Sunday, September 20th you should stop on by Skate World and enjoy the sounds of simpler times while roller skating, a family past time that has been the one lone survivor of the ages on West Erie Avenue in Lorain.

Thanks for reading!