Giant-boob-shaped building may be moved

Winter Park’s boob-shaped building could be getting a lift, if someone is willing to pay for it that is.

Talks have surfaced about a potential project to pick up the gentlemen’s club on Lee Road, formerly known as the Booby Trap, and have it moved to a Georgia property owned by the club’s original builder and owner Tom Veigle.

City Commissioners had voted last month to buy the property at 2600 Lee Road and have it demolished – a vote Mayor Ken Bradley said he made due the club’s history of criminal activity, including illegal drugs and car theft.

Veigle said he wanted to use the two fiberglass domes, originally purposed as permanent tents, and use them for a campsite at the Thomas Kosmon Veigle Children’s Foundation – an orphanage he established in Tiger, Ga. back in 2004 in honor of his deceased son.

“We have 80 acres of land and about 10 buildings and we’ve been working with children and families,” Veigle said. “Our big plans are to put together a super-modern children’s home.”

The domes are easily split apart and moved, he said, part of the building’s visibly creative design. The individual domes could be used as shelters for the charity.

“A campsite straddles a creek that runs right through our property, and I thought about putting [the domes] up there. I was going to put wigwams, but the domes would work also.”

The club, built by Veigle in the 1970s and formerly known as Club Harem and currently Christie’s Cabaret, has changed hands several times over the years. A sign still stands today reading Club Rio, another previous name.

Veigle said moving the domes likely isn’t feasible due to cost, but said he’s open to working with the city if they can help pay for the move. Whether Veigle’s personal save the tatas campaign takes off may be up to splitting the bill.

“If I could get someone to help me out with the funding, that could change everything,” he said.

The move wouldn’t be new for the city. Winter Park has seen its share of large-scale building relocations in recent years, moving the 750-ton brick-walled Casa Feliz several hundred feet across a golf course to its new home, and in the past year cutting a 128-year-old two-story in half and floating it across a lake. Both buildings are far less infamously shaped than the one in question.

Winter Park spokesperson Clarissa Howard said that Veigle hasn’t formally approached the city yet about having the building moved, but said Winter Park would be willing to negotiate with Veigle if it made sense – and someone else paid the cost of moving the structure.

“They haven’t officially reached out to us,” Howard said.

“If there’s someone that’s going to pay the cost to move it and take it off the land, it would be something we wouldn’t dismiss.”