June 17, 1977 Nightlife: The Three Coins

 

More proof that behind every glitzy façade, there’s an up-from-the-bootstraps story. 

June 17, 1977 

The Three Coins 

          Augustus Bersani drove out to a land auction on Niagara Falls Boulevard in 1949 and got a break from the weather. A horrendous storm blew up and the other bidders apparently washed out. When the gavel pounded, he turned out to be the only one there.

          So he built a motel on the land. Forty units. Niagara Falls Boulevard was just a two-lane highway in those days, but nevertheless it was the main route to the Falls. The motel prospered. Mr. Bersani, who came from Canada, became a U.S. citizen. This was his dream.

          But it didn’t end there. The dream went on to include a couple of sons, Rudi and Dave, and additions to the motel. Rudi went to the University of Buffalo, earned a degree in business administration and came to work for his father. That was 1958. Dave, three years younger, came to work for his father that year too.

          The boulevard boomed and the Bersanis boomed with it. While the Youngmann Highway and the Thruway routed tourists elsewhere, the old Falls route became the commercial mainline for Buffalo’s burgeoning northern suburbs.

          In 1964, the Bersanis built a plush restaurant beside the motel and called it the Three Coins, a reference to the wishing well fable of the three coins in the fountain.

          The Three Coins was blessed with success. After the demise of Buffalo’s old showcase nightspot, the Town Casino, the Three Coins ascended as an entertainment mecca with a series of fast-stepping show bands, starting with Linda Price & the Pipers.

          It was quite a legacy Augustus Bersani passed on to his sons when he died in 1969. What once was a dream had become a Niagara Falls Boulevard landmark.

          Rudi and Dave have no intention of letting their father’s dream fade. The Three Coins retains a reputation as a place that enhances a dress-up evening, whether it’s for dinner, dancing or musical entertainment.

          Yes, you dress for the Three Coins. Not necessarily formally, though the rooms invite you to. A sign will inform you that proper dress is required. T-shirts and dungarees, needless to say, are out of the question.

          There’s no cover charge. If you arrive after 10:30, choose between the tables and the 105-foot-long bar, which provides a myriad of places to perch and watch while an attractive, vivacious, good-playing band like the Joel Dane Show from Rochester interlaces vocals on a knockout “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey.”

          The groups are more watched and applauded than danced to. Most of the time, dancing is for when the group takes a break and the disco deejay starts working. It may be Frank Nestro or Gary Kellum.

          Mondays, when the groups have the night off, the Joseph Zera Dance Studio instructors come in to teach the Latin hustle and the other disco steps. At midnight, there’s a free buffet.

          You have to agree with Rudi that the Coins’ circular sound booth is one of the best in the area. Not only that, but you can pick up a phone at various places around the room and phone in a request.

          The deejay also commands the color-flashing dance floor, which has been doubled in size. There’s 3,000 combinations of lights. The deejay can even make them shimmy.

          The sons are discovering that their father’s dream has its boundaries, however. Rudi observes that the most recent expansion of the Three Coins dance floor is the last.

          “We can’t go any further,” he says.

          But food is one place the Three Coins is able to go further and the two brothers want to go there. Dave and Rudi are looking to the banquet trade. They already run more than 700 a year.

          In May, Rudi says, banquets brought 6,000 people to the Coins for what he describes as “the basic American menu. Prime rib, steaks, a couple of Italian items, a menu of variety, really.”

          June means prom parties and weddings. Summer brings theater-goers en route to and from Melody Fair. Strolling over from what is now a 100-unit motel are visitors to UB’s Amherst Campus, business representatives who call at Union Carbide, Durez and the Boulevard Mall and, of course, tourists bound for the Falls.

          The chef is Eddie Kutas, who held forth at Esmond’s in Cheektowaga for many years. Nothing is too difficult a challenge to him, it appears. He’s catered everything from Hungarian parties to Hawaiian luaus, Rudi says.

          Dave and Rudi also have hired a banquet manager. He’s Paul Brown, an efficient, knowledgeable, 25-year-old graduate of Michigan State University’s hotel and restaurant management school, and he’s almost like one of the family.

          “I supervise the banquets and keep tabs on the whole dining facility,” he says. “I started here as a busboy in ’64 and I’ve been working on and off here ever since.”

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IN THE PHOTO: A challenge to make out what’s on the page, but the upper one appears to be the deejay booth looking out at the dance floor (and if I’m not mistaken, that’s Frankie Nestro at the turntables). The one in the lower left corner shows a band on the bandstand, probably that group from Rochester.

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FOOTNOTE: Although the Three Coins was not my kind of hangout, I wound up spending quite a few nights there before its demise, most memorably for the Buffalo Music Awards in the 1980s. It’s gone now, Maple Leaf Motor Lodge and all, replaced by a strip plaza and a Buffalo Wild Wings outpost.

          As noted in the footnote a Pause story from back in 1974, Frankie Nestro worked for nine years as a deejay at the Three Coins and then for more than 30 years aboard ships of the Royal Caribbean cruise lines.

          Rudi (or Rudy) Bersani, meanwhile, became a partner in the revival of Melody Fair with concert promoter Ed Smith, who died in November. Bersani went on to own Slick Willie’s Sports and Party Bar in the Town of Tonawanda.