Last call coming for Sgt. Preston’s. Is a hotel project nearby next?
‘End of an era,’ as Sgt. Preston’s, a downtown Lafayette mainstay, sells building, prepares to close in May after 42 years. What’s next is still up in the air for John Purdue Block and its neighbor
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LAST CALL COMING FOR PRESTON’S. IS HOTEL PROJECT NEXT DOOR COMING NEXT?
Word spread quickly Wednesday afternoon, the casual clientele getting in on what regulars already had been sharing among themselves since late last week, that Sgt. Preston’s of the North was about to end a run that started in November 1980 at the corner of Second and South streets.
The available seats filled, hours after owners Doug and Karen Cooper announced that they’d sold the John Purdue Block, including the restaurant and bar space that had been there for 42-plus years.
“Maybe that was a little bit of it,” Rich Mickey, operations manager who’s been with Sgt. Preston’s for 30 years, said. “Mainly, I think, it was the first nice, 80-degree day. Everyone was looking to be out on the patio. That always means busy.”
Doug Cooper came to Lafayette in 1980 looking to plant a Sgt. Preston’s, similar to concept under the same name that he’d run in his hometown Lawrence, Kansas, with the idea of being close, but not too close, to a college campus.
The restaurant and bar – decorated with Royal Canadian Mounted Police flair and outdoorsy touches of mounted hunting trophies on the brick walls and a canoe hand-built in northern Minnesota and hanging dead center from the ceiling – drew as much from a Purdue crowd that had little other bar action at the time in West Lafayette as it did from the banker, shift worker and county commissioner set in the days when restaurants and night life were sparse downtown Lafayette, too.
“It’s one of the places where you knew you were going the day before Thanksgiving to see people back in town,” Susan Cartwright, who grew up in Lafayette and went to Purdue, said, recalling the “Wild Turkey Night” tradition at Preston’s. “All those schooner nights. All those reunions at Preston’s. End of an era.”
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