The owner of a dilapidated and storm-damaged club where, Fats Domino and Freddy Fender once played used trailers and a truck today to keep a wrecking crew from razing the building.

Sparkle Paradise hadn't been open since 1999, but Tiny Richardson, the 78-year-old owner, said he had been trying to repair the building when Hurricane Rita hit.

City officials, Orange County sheriff's deputies and contractors were on hand today as a wrecking crew tried to begin a city-ordered demolition.

Jerry Jones, Bridge City's public works director, said the next step will be to file an injunction to continue the demolition.

The city cut off electricity to the building in 2003 because of concerns about the safety of the building and issued three citations on the property this year.

"The thing had run down to the point that it was becoming too dangerous a structure," Jones said in a story in Tuesday's Beaumont Enterprise. "It needed a lot of repair work and over the years it keeps deteriorating and the storm has made it worse."

Jones said contractors who went inside discovered many of the support beams are being held in place by one bolt.

Richardson will face a $500 fine for every day the structure remains. Jones said it will cost $22,800 to raze the building and haul away the debris. A lien will be placed on the property.

Richardson built the club in 1958 to replace two clubs that were opened on the property in the 1940s. He said he got the dance floor from the Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler dance hall in Cameron, La., after it was destroyed by Hurricane Audrey in 1957. Metal from the old Lone Star Brewery in Port Arthur was used to expand the club around the original building.

Marcia Ball had a song titled "Sparkle Paradise" on her Blue House album in 1994.

"I was the king of honky-tonk," Richardson told the newspaper.

The club closed sometime after the 1980s and Richardson's son, Randy, reopened it on Saturday nights in 1996. It closed again in 1999.
Bridge City is located about 20 miles southeast of Beaumont near the Texas-Louisiana border.