The 1980s: Canterbury, and the big-room turn

The clubs of the 1980s

The shopping center becomes a nightclub: Fort Wayne's defining nightlife act of the 1980s happened in a shopping center. In 1984 the Auburn businessman H. Stanley "Stan" Liddell bought the Marketplace of Canterbury, on Saint Joe Road on the northeast side. When his largest tenant moved out, leaving 30,000 square feet unleased, Liddell first made it an indoor Garden Mall of boutiques and cafés; the mall already held a bar, Brubaker's Bar and Grill, where the young Todd Smith — later the city's other club operator of scale — would be hired in 1990 as Brubaker's closed. Then Liddell converted the center into a destination for adults: on November 1, 1989, by the business record, Piere's Entertainment Center opened, a nightclub complex built to be, in Liddell's own formula, "a destination, not just a bar" — because, as his staff remembered him reasoning, the average life expectancy of a bar is about two years. The address appears in records as both 5629 and 5675 Saint Joe Road, the complex's storefronts spanning the center.

The Liddell portfolio: Canterbury was the center of a small nightlife empire. Liddell's obituary records that he also founded Picasso's, a banquet and catering house at the complex run for fifteen years by his eldest daughter; founded Flashback's on the Landing, the retro dance club told in the formats entry below; and acquired the Trolley Bar — Trolley Steaks & Seafood, a favorite north-side eatery. In 1984, the same year Liddell bought Canterbury, Snickerz Comedy Club began at 5535 Saint Joe Road in the same complex — the comedy format's Fort Wayne home, told in the formats entry. Community memory, printed as memory and nothing more, names one more room of the era for which no directory or press trace was reached: Rumors, remembered as originally Gentry's, a two-story disco and dance club at the North Star center on East State Boulevard, running through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Sources:

1. Obituary of H. Stanley "Stan" Liddell Jr., Fort Wayne Newspapers (February 6, 2013), and Feller & Clark Funeral Homes — the 1984 purchase of the Marketplace of Canterbury, the Garden Mall phase, the opening of Piere's with its five clubs and "Fourth in the World for Clubs 21+" billing, Picasso's, Flashback's on the Landing, and the Trolley Bar; ACGSI's People record adds the 1994 News-Sentinel profile ("a brass-knuckle arena… Liddell is the reigning champ in Fort Wayne") and the 1996 Business People moniker "Prince of Piere's," and points to Jeff Wiehe's "Fallen Piere's founder 'really cared,'" The Journal Gazette, February 6, 2013.
2. Better Business Bureau business profile, Piere's Entertainment Center — business started November 1, 1989; incorporated November 8, 1984; alternate names including Garden Mall Inc., Picasso's, Cyber Club, and Crooners; address listed as 5675 Saint Joe Road, with 5629 Saint Joe Road the address in club listings and reporting.
3. Whatzup, "H. Stanley Liddell" — Sandy Golden, at Piere's from April 1990, on the property's grocery-and-vending-booth phase, the Saint Joe Road widening, and Liddell's "destination, not just a bar" reasoning; Tish Liddell on building the complex.
4. Business People, "His Secret to Success" — Todd Smith hired at Brubaker's in the Marketplace of Canterbury in 1990 as it closed, his rise through Piere's to chief executive, and his later portfolio (Flashback on the Landing, Early Bird's Ultra Lounge, the Trolley, the closed Mitchell's Sports Bar, YOLO Event Center, Main Street Bistro opened September 2013).
5. Community memory (Facebook nightlife-history discussions, 2024–2026) — Rumors/Gentry's at North Star; printed as memory only, no listing or press trace reached.