The Kenai Peninsula’s only strip club will be demolished this week.
If you’ve driven into Soldotna, you’ve likely seen the yellow building right on the side of the Sterling Highway. Good Time Charlie’s has been owned and operated by Charlie Cunningham for almost 50 years. For the last 30, he’s had a unique deal with the state that meant he had to be ready to tear down the building at any time.
That time has finally come. And Cunningham, now 77, said the impending demolition has brought on a mixed bag of emotions.
Inside the gutted shell of the former club on a recent morning, he pointed to the three stages that used to define the space — one of them covered in demolished lumber.
Cunningham has owned the highway-side club since he was 29. He even lived in the space for several years, in an apartment he constructed in the back corner of the club. He said for 18 years, he operated the club as a school for dancers, where he taught 150 girls a year how to succeed as strippers in a small town.
“It always amazed me,” he said. “The girls who had been dancing for 20 years, they’d come up here from anywhere in the world. They knew how to hustle, but their hustle was cut and run. And you can’t do that in this small town environment.”
Cunningham said there’s not as much money in the strip club as there used to be.
The oil boom in the ’70s and ’80s made for good business, as workers from the Lower 48 flocked to the Kenai and brought their money with them. But the business declined as the economy faltered.
The final nail in the coffin came in 1991, when the Alaska Department of Transportation purchased the land under the club for a highway safety project.
Now that DOT is finally moving ahead with that project, Charlie’s is closing — and dancers have to find other work.
Cunningham said there were 24 dancers on his payroll when he closed the club for good last month on July 29. He said like many gigs on the Kenai Peninsula, stripping has largely been a seasonal job for his employees.
“It’s kind of a circuit, if you will. The girls follow the money — the money circuit, they call it,” he said. “Up here it’s the fish season, then it’s the hunting season. And then they leave here and go to tarpon [season] in Florida, then quail season, then football games, then Vegas. They just keep moving. Innit the way of the world?”
One of those strippers is a dancer who goes by Angel, who worked at Good Time Charlie’s for seven years. She lived in Anchorage but commuted down to Soldotna each week during fishing season.
She said Cunningham and his wife, Diane, were like parents to her. She said Diane would throw birthday celebrations for all of the girls, with cake and balloons.
“Some owners or management — they are just rude, or don’t interact with you or interact with the club or anything. Charlie and Diane [are] different,” she said. “They interact with the club, they interact with the customers, make sure the girls are fine, make sure we’re fed.”
Cunningham, for his part, said he doesn’t have particularly hard feelings about the closure. He said he’s had a great relationship with the city of Soldotna during his time in business and a good relationship with DOT during their negotiations.
Shannon McCarthy, a spokesperson for DOT, said the department’s deal with Good Time Charlie’s is unlike any other. Thirty years ago, in 1991, when DOT purchased the land under the club, it allowed the business to lease the land back from the department until the project kicked off. Everyone expected that to last a year or two.
But the project stalled, and so Cunningham just continued to lease the land from DOT for three decades. As a result, he’s paid an enviable, unchanging $2,490 a year — or $207 a month — in rent.
“The lease that he signed 30 years ago was a little bit unique in that it basically was an agreement that he would demolish the building, which is not something that we see typically in our contracts,” McCarthy said.
She said that DOT is now getting started again on that project, which the department hopes will reduce serious and fatal crashes in the area by expanding the highway from two to four lanes and adding in medians, turn lanes and separated bike paths.
The self-scheduled demolition was originally planned for Aug. 26, but an issue getting the electric pulled out in time has pushed it back to this Thursday and Friday.
Today, the property is gutted. The signs are down, and Cunningham has sold off most of the items that used to fill the space.
Angel said she’ll remember Charlie’s fondly.
“I just miss it. I miss everything. It was just different. They walk you out when you leave the club, they make sure you’re safe. They don’t do that in Anchorage. They’re supposed to but they don’t. I felt safe in that club,” she said.
Angel said many of the other dancers from Good Time Charlie’s are currently on the hunt for other workday jobs. She said due to grandfather laws, and the fact that Good Time Charlie’s hasn’t had a liquor license for roughly a year, the club was allowed to have 18- year-old dancers.
But Anchorage clubs mostly restrict dancers to 21 and up. So the dancers from Charlie’s are now looking for other types of employment.
Cunningham, too, is without a job.
He’s owned 12 other businesses, including hotels, during his life. He’s a grandfather of 54. But now, he said, he doesn’t know what’s next for him.
“I’m scared. I don’t know. I’ve always been so active. But now that I’m being forced to retire, I don’t know,” he said.
Still, when it comes to his extra 30 years of operation, he said he feels nothing but grateful.
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