Situated on a hill at the corner of Freedom and Morehead in Charlotte, the restaurant attracted some business, but quickly became a victim of the economic slump of the early ’70s. Charlotte’s West Side was hit particularly hard.

For many years the building would sit vacant. A handful of other restaurants and nightclubs would come and go so quickly that the building developed a reputation on the West side for being cursed.

Sometime in 1984 Charlotte resident Robert “Jack” Eury decided he would open his own club at the dubious location that housed the former steakhouse. Eury was relatively well known in the city’s gay community — he had previously owned an adult bookstore next to a string of nightclubs in a shopping center at the corner of Eastway and the Plaza.

Along with his partners Danny Clontz and Bobby Smith, he opened the dance club Chase’s in the hopes that they could catch some of the crowd that had become bored with the city’s gay club mainstay — The Scorpio Lounge.

The building had scant renovations since it initially opened — the original faux stone (once the trademark design style for the steakhouse chain) was still intact inside and out. Nevertheless, business was brisk. Gays and lesbians were excited about having an alternative venue to attend — for a little while anyway.

Then things started to go sour.

I was barely out of my teens on a night I can still recall spent at the cursed spot with a handful of friends. Late one evening we had all piled into my vintage ’63 Caddy (it was falling apart in more ways than one but the tailfins were soooo cool).

That afternoon I had spent part of the day cleaning the car, and I had removed the spare tire from the trunk. I meant to put it back in — but the thought slipped my mind. That would come back to haunt me at night’s end.

By the time we arrived at Chase’s the parking lots were overflowing and I was forced to put my monster mobile in a lot across Freedom Dr. There wasn’t much to the club — just a few disco lights, a tile floor, some chairs and bars and that ugly fake stonework. It didn’t matter though — we were all young and reveling in our new found gay and lesbian unity and drinking as much as humanly possible to prove the point. Life was beautiful.

A few hours later we re-emerged from the club to find numerous individuals running around the parking lot screaming about slashed tires. According to varying individuals, more than 100 cars had been vandalized outside Chase’s that evening.

Including my spare-tireless Caddy.

Jacking up a 1963 Cadillac to change a spare tire, by the way, is nothing short of a major undertaking. The weight of the car nears three tons and whoever the genius was at GM that thought it could be easily supported by a standard jack never had the pleasure of watching the beast topple sideways onto a naked brake cylinder.

But I digress...

Cell phones didn’t exist yet and I was still just a baby living at home with mom and dad — so I tromped up to the nearest payphone at 1:30 a.m. and politely requested my father bring me my spare tire.

Dad was amazingly considerate, given the circumstances. He showed up in less than half an hour, tire in hand and a look of amazement on his face when a group of rather sizable drag queens sauntered by as we were jacking up the Cadillac.

“Those are sum rea-yul big gals,” he said in his best rural Carolina twang.

I laughed nervously. The Cadillac teetered on its jack as it slumped to the right and the sound of metal slamming into concrete sent the big girls scurrying.

In a skillful combination of speed and agility, I finally managed to balance the car and replace the tire after another attempt. Dad headed for home and my friends and I ended up crashing at somebody’s apartment for the evening. We were amused by the drag queen-dad-tire fiasco, but disconcerted that someone — or some group of people — had felt the need to vandalize so many unsuspecting patrons.

Within months, attendance at Chase’s began to decline as partiers drifted back to Scorpio for the safe environment and overall comfort they had grown accustomed to over the years.

Here’s where things get really ugly.

Eury, Clontz and Smith — apparently stung by the economic pinch of The Scorpio Lounge — hatched a plan to put the competing club out of business.

According to a story in the Charlotte Observer, Eury masterminded the plan, Smith started the fire and Clontz drove the getaway car.

Eury was sentenced to 14 years, while Smith and Clontz received 11-year terms for their involvement in the fire that closed down the Scorpio Lounge.

After repairs, Scorpio would open again and thrive, but the building at the corner of Freedom and Morehead once again stood vacant.

A few more years would pass before the Pterodactyl would open in the space that once housed Chase’s.

The Pterodactyl was a different kind of club. Not really gay, not really straight. It was a mix of alternative and goth kids of all walks of life, listening and dancing to a different kind of sound and wearing dark clothes and retro thrift store finds that clearly set them apart from the mainstream. The decor was a bit of an improvement — for the time anyway — some walls were painted with leopard spots and spray-painted black mannequins were dressed in bondage wear — creating a sort of retro-torture cave appeal. The faux rocks were still there, of course.

The combination of elements worked somehow — the Pterodactyl enjoyed a lengthy and successive run and over the years crowds were entertained by the music of DJs like Tober and Mark Stowe and such live bands as Jason and the Scorchers, Love Tractor, lovejones, Jane’s Addiction and Let’s Active, among others.

The Pterodactyl was not without its share of controversy — a quick internet search on the club revealed a shooting and a sexual assault of club patrons. It was, however, quite probably the only business to ever be truly successful in the building. The club would remain open for more than seven years, finally closing sometime in the mid-90s.

Once again the building stood empty. An unmemorable reggae club occupied the space briefly, but the writing was on the wall.

Rezoning for the neighborhood eventually signed the death warrant for the building, which stood less than 50 feet from a private residence.

The ugly pseudo-barn shaped building at 1600 Freedom Dr. would not be inhabited again — grass grew up through the cracks in the pavement and cheap liquor bottles littered the front and back entryways.

Just by chance I passed that way a few days ago and noticed that half of the building had been demolished. Gone was the faux-stone and mystery-wood facade. Much of the roof was ripped off — parts of it lying across the dance floor.

There was no one around — it was early evening — I couldn’t help but take a closer look.

A large portion of the rear of the building was standing and looked sturdy — so I cautiously inched my way into the back door and down the hallway.

Still intact amidst the debris — ironic I thought — was that damn faux stone front bar. Atop the bar was a dusty bondage mannequin torso. She’d probably sat there unmoved for more than 10 years.

I stood looking for only a brief moment — pondering all the history that had been a part of this quirky place. I was glad I got to be a part of it — even if the building was cursed.