Club opens cigar haven
Lounge helps boost membership at venerable hangout.
Monday, March 19, 2007 By KURT BRESSWEIN
The Express-Times
BETHLEHEM | Sometimes a cigar is just the ticket to breathing new life into an old idea.
As more and more Lehigh Valley restaurants and bars close their doors to smokers, the venerable Bethlehem Club is embracing cigar aficionados by giving them a room of their own.
A year shy of its 100th anniversary, the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. clubhouse opened the Cigars International Lounge in the Bethlehem Club on Saturday.
Paired with bowling, bands and free steamed clams on Friday nights, the lounge has helped boost membership to more than 500 from less than 100 last fall, officials at the 520 N. New St. members-only club say.
"It used to be people waited on line to join this club," Manager Lucy Lennon said. "It was the Bethlehem Club."
East Allen Township-based Cigars International, which has a retail store on Main Street in Center City, teamed up with Lennon in creating the $50,000-plus smokers' paradise out of an underused party room.
Gone are the mauve paint, floral curtains and big brass chandeliers that made Lennon think of a "1972 grandmother's living room." Blown-glass and recessed lights illuminate new leather seating, a custom-built bar, 54-inch television and 24-locker professionally maintained humidor.
During a preview tour last week, Lennon said shuffleboard, a poker table, bar tables and club-wide wireless Internet were on their way to the newly coffee-colored room sporting state-of-the-art air filtration.
The nonprofit club's cigar lounge is the exception to the Lehigh Valley's growing no-smoking rule.
Steelgaarden in Main Street Commons joined its parent Bethlehem Brew Works last December in snuffing out smokes. The cattycorner-located Edge Restaurant allows smoking at the bar and cigars only after dining service ends.
The Coalition for a Smoke-Free Valley touts 182 franchise eateries and 389 privately owned bars and restaurants as smoke-free.
Membership at the Bethlehem Club costs $50 a year, down from the $300 initiation fee and $40 monthly fee of old, club secretary Paul Balla said.
"As Bethlehem Steel closed, or even as they started getting rid of people, people started dropping out of here," Balla said. "And we had nothing to make up that difference."
Easton's Pomfret Club has joined the push for more amenities but has kept membership rates largely unchanged at $55 a month plus the $300 initiation fee, board of directors' President John Richetta said.
Some are drawn to the 122-year-old 33 S. Fourth St. club by special privileges through a reciprocation agreement with Harkers Hollow Golf Club outside Phillipsburg or by art shows started just this month.
Reporter Kurt Bresswein can be reached at 610-867-5000 or by e-mail at
kbresswein@express-times.com. 1/3/à=(( I_¶? 1/3/à=((
