Business

March 7, 2008

Hardware Bar opening in time for St. Patrick’s Day

Business is first of three phases of new bar and entertainment business.

By Ron Bartizek rbartizek@timesleader.com
Business & Consumer / City Editor

WILKES-BARRE – There will be a new watering hole downtown, just in time for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. The Hardware Bar will open next Thursday, said Ron Kamionka, and the timing is not accidental.

“We open all our bars up on major drinking holidays,” Kamionka said Thursday, just after the sign went up.

Other preparations are going smoothly, with three full-time and more than 20 part-time employees on board and interior renovations to the former Club Mardi Gras on schedule.

“Literally, the first day we had enough people hired,” he said.

The Hardware Bar is the first of three phases in what will eventually be a 13,000-square-foot bar and entertainment business in the first block of South Main Street. It will offer minimal food, a large bar, live bands and a staff that performs choreographed dance routines on the bar.

“We’re not a ‘see and be seen, place,” Kamionka said, but an entertainment business. “You’ve got to super serve people.”

The second club, Main Street Saloon, will open within 45 days, he said, featuring large sit-down areas and “a little less rambunctious” atmosphere. A third section will open by the end of the year, but Kamionka said he will wait on the concept until he has a better idea of what will be popular.

“I try to deliver what the market desires,” he said.

Kamionka Entertainment Group operates 14 nightclubs in central Pennsylvania. A native of Mountain Top, Kamionka has lived in the Harrisburg area for 15 years but plans to spend plenty of time at the new club over the next several weeks.

New Orleans-themed Club Mardi Gras closed in October after just a year in business.

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