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Article published Thursday, September 18, 2008

1 WHITE TOWER, TO GO
Developer buys diner for return to downtown oasis;
joint to flip sites for new operation
By JC REINDL
BLADE STAFF WRITER

That neon-lit era of 24-hour diners and the 3 a.m. ButterBURGER could soon return to downtown Toledo.

The White Tower diner at Jefferson Avenue and 10th Street, the first and last official outpost in the state of the restaurant chain, has a new owner who plans to dismantle, rebuild, and reopen it as an all-hours burger joint under the White Tower name.

Bruce Rumpf, owner of Rumpf Development Corp. and the Job 1 USA staffing agency, bought the closed 1929 diner for $1 from the YWCA of Greater Toledo in a sale announced yesterday. Mr. Rumpf anticipates burgers flipping as early as next spring at Monroe and Ontario streets on what’s presently a parking lot across from a Shell station. The project represents a $400,000 to $500,00 investment for him, Mr. Rumpf said.

“It was called the ‘Oasis in the Night’ because it was open 24/7, and that’s something that we will re-create — open 24/7 — so that there’s always a place to go to in downtown Toledo,” Mr. Rumpf said. The goal is to refurbish the 600-square-foot building — stools, countertops, and all the rest — to look as it did during White Tower’s heyday in the first half of 20th century. This specific diner closed in 2004 after 75 years of nearly continuous service. The restaurant was the first White Tower to open in Ohio and ultimately became one of more than a dozen Toledo locations.

Earlier this year, the YWCA began offering the historic diner for $1 to anyone willing to pay to move it from its present location, which is slated to become part of the YWCA’s planned $10.1 million expansion project of new apartments for battered women and low-income mothers and children. Lisa McDuffie, who is the YWCA president and chief executive officer, said she received about 30 inquiries for the White Tower from as far away as Georgia after an article appeared this summer in The Blade.

Ultimately, there were two serious offers: Mr. Rumpf’s and one from the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, which sought to install portions of the diner inside its museum building, Ms. McDuffie said. “It’s important to keep something that is Toledo in Toledo,” she said. There were about 230 White Towers at the chain’s height of popularity in the 1950s. The restaurants in Ohio were concentrated in Toledo, Dayton, and Cleveland.

While the newer and larger White Tower family-dining restaurant at 1515 West Sylvania Ave. in West Toledo still serves some classic White Tower menu items, it is no longer considered part of the original chain after it changed hands in 2004. Mr. Rumpf, who used to frequent the Jefferson and 10th White Tower, hopes the newly restored diner also will become a Toledo tourist attraction. He said he plans to serve original-recipe White Tower menu items like the ButterBURGER, with its simultaneously famous and infamous butter-soaked buns.

“Being in the downtown myself for 34 years, there probably wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t have a Double ButterBURGER or something from there,” he said. Local architect Bob Seyfang and builder Jim Moline have signed on for the reconstruction project. The dismantling is to begin and finish within 30 days, with the building’s components put in storage over the winter. “I’m proud of our history in this city and I think we need to celebrate more of the history, and the way we can do it is to make sure we don’t tear down what that history has been,” Mr. Rumpf said.