Friday, September 23, 2016

Former strip club site set for redevelopment




The longtime owners of the faded strip mall once home to the Pink Pussy Kat strip club have sold the property to a new owner who is planning to erect a new 40,000-square-foot shopping center in its place.
The new owner Cliff Wylie said he heard about plans to produce a documentary about the Pink Pussy Kat, but wasn’t interested in restoring the long-closed club.
“I’m tearing that building
down,” Wylie said.
He plans on combining Orangevale Plaza (9346 Greenback Late) with two neighboring plots to create Orangevale Downtown Plaza. Plans have already been submitted to Sacramento County.
“We want to revitalize this end of town,” said Wylie, a first-time developer who owns the granite shop across the street. Wylie said he’s looking for national tenants “like a Beach Hut Deli” and a drive-through coffee retailer to bring a little sizzle to the site.
A documentary on the Pink Pussy Kat and the indecency trial are well underway. The film-making team has secured some of the historic footage needed and are securing funds needed to green light the project.
If Pink Pussy Kat A Go-Go’s old strip mall  ever had any luster, it has lost it decades ago. The entire mall showed signs of its age. The parking lot barely defined. Business signs old are old and hard to read. The actual location Pussy Kat houses an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting location.
The former owner John Lydon Byrne said he was happy to be done with Orangevale Plaza, which he said had turned into a money pit as the building aged.
Byrne was in his 20s when his father bought the site in the early 70s, after the 1969 indecency trial that brought the club into the national spotlight.
When the trial ended and its semi-famous dancer Susanne (Tropper) Haynes hit the road business drooped.
 He said the club remained open three to five years after his family owned it, but he could not pinpoint an exact year. He said his father was friendly with Leonard Glancy, the club’s owner, but wasn’t fond of the business.
“He wanted them out of there,” Byrne said.