The Meadowlark Listening Room opened in Sterling on Saturday, October 11 in the newly remodeled building that formerly housed The Corner Bar. Regular business hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 4 p.m. until close. Dale and Jessica Barnes of Virginia, Nebraska, looked for a place to open a bar for two years before they discovered that the former Corner Bar was up for lease.
“We thought about it for a week,” Dale said. Then they talked to the owner of the building, Jay Vanis, and so began a six-month project to fix the place up. And it needed a lot of fixing. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, the restrooms - starting in May, the building had a nearly total makeover, from pouring more concrete to support the floor and moving up from there.
It was also six months of tearing down barns and sheds to reclaim materials. The antique stamped tin on the bar came from a shed belonging to Rick Kelle, tin came from a couple of sheds they found out of state, barn wood came from a place near Syracuse. Vanis gave them an old 1940’s light with the original bulbs still working that was found in the basement of the old Sterling skating rink he is remodeling. The Carona sign they have hanging behind the bar, which used to hang on the opposite wall in the Corner Bar, was given to them by Holt Wiebe.
