Plant City dance enthusiasts are having their final farewell events at Stardust Dance Center this month, as the venue is set to close in January after 17 years. But the closing was not the decision of owners Tammy and Curt Worlock.
Beall’s Outlet is an anchor store in the Plant City Plaza on James L. Redman Parkway, where Stardust is located. Beall’s executives wanted to expand and renovate the store, which is more than 20 years old. They told the plaza’s property manager that they either needed to take over Stardust’s adjacent 7,000 square feet or Beall’s would leave the plaza altogether.
The property manager decided to let Beall’s have the extra space.
“We never thought we’d have to worry about this,” Curt said. “We thought we had the perfect location. We had no thoughts in our mind of changing anything.”
Ken Miller is president of the Plant City Social Dance Club, which has held dances weekly at Stardust since 1999. Miller is unsure what will happen to the club after it loses access to the floating wooden dance floor, whose structural features prevent soreness.
“We have two possibilities that have large space, but it’s going to take a whole lot for them to get the space ready, if it’s in our cost range,” Miller said.
The club has had more than 100 guests attend its dances in the past few months, but Miller said there is no other established dance venue in Plant City that can accommodate that many people. He will have to start taking reservations and is disappointed that he will have to turn some people away.
Because of the lack of venue, the club does not currently have any events scheduled for January.
“A lot of these people have lost a pleasure that they looked forward to,” Miller said. “We’ve enjoyed it, and it’s just a shame that Beall’s would do this to so many people.”
The Worlocks will not be reopening Stardust at a different location. Curt said it would be too expensive.
Stardust also hosted private lessons, social dances and Zumba. Dancers associated with all of these activities will have to find other venues.
Bill Webster, a spokesman for Beall’s, said that the expansion and renovation will make the store “a much more shoppable environment.”
“We’ve been in Plant City for a long time, and really, we can’t do the business that we ought to do out of the space available. So we wanted to either expand or buy a new location for many years,” Webster said.
The project will start in February and should take three to four months. The store will remain open during this time.
Some improvements will be a bigger shoe department and wider aisles. The checkout experience will also be streamlined with one long counter, similar to an airport ticketing station.
“Nothing will be the same,” Webster said.
LAST CALLS
The final two social events will be:
Ice Cream Social
6 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 21
Cost: $7
Farewell Dance
4 to 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 4
Cost: $10
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.
