The old airport terminal at Key West International Airport lacked air-conditioning, left luggage unattended for arrivals in a large opening in the wall while people came and went as they pleased. It has been gone since the mid 1990s, but even the remodeled terminal that followed looked and felt like something you expected to find at a remote island landing strip in the Caribbean. However, change is about to come to the airport and in a big way.

The Conch Flyer Restaurant and Bar, along with its colorful history, has also gone through a variety of changes at the airport since the 1950s, when it was the International Royal Restaurant and Gift Shop, but no change has been as expensive or as elaborate as those that will bring the restaurant and airport terminal into the 21st Century.

The new terminal, with plans to open Feb. 25, is larger, brighter and a reminder that the Florida Keys has finally caught up with this century’s technology. The terminal’s centerpiece is the Conch Flyer Restaurant and Bar.

The 4,400-square-foot restaurant in the new terminal is larger and brighter than the old, 3,000-square-foot restaurant and bar nestled off the cramped and cluttered ticket counters in the old terminal.

At the new Conch Flyer, large windows look over the old terminal and tarmac, allowing daylight to brighten the yellow walls of the restaurant. The use of simulated Dade County pine along the walls, floor, and ceiling, and stonework, especially at the new bar, helps create the look of old Florida warmth.

“We spent a lot of time planning this new restaurant,” said John Richmond, owner of the Conch Flyer since September 24, 1984. “But the old place isn’t really going away.”

The old Conch Flyer will go through a major overhaul before re-opening to ticketed passengers only.

“When the old terminal is reworked into a departure area, the bar and restaurant section is going to be nice,” Richmond said. “We’ll have a full-service bar with some food. We still haven’t decided on a name for it.”

Richmond hopes to be able to bring back the old manmade sand beach and tiki huts that were located at the old restaurant’s small outdoor patio for years, but it depends on final approval of his plans for the remodeled bar.

“The area will be a secured area for ticketed passengers only, and even our employees will need to pass a security background check to work there,” Richmond said. “We are trying to show the beach area can be secure, too.”

The new debarkation lounge will be larger than the current area and will have bathrooms and the new restaurant-bar, something the existing, smaller area doesn’t offer passengers once they’ve passed through security.

“It will be a place for ticketed passengers, who have passed through security, to grab a quick bite and their last drink in Key West,” Bill Cauger, bar manager said.

Sitting at the new, brick and wood bar, with a bulky airplane propeller unit positioned in front of the long bar mirror, Richmond, Bill Cauger and Conch Flyer General Manager Lynn Cauger agreed that the old Conch Flyer had a checkered past.

“You know, at its heyday in the 1970s, a guy named Stacy Harnish owned the business and it was a topless bar called the Great Escape,” Richmond laughed. “It had an all-girl topless band.”

“It burnt down in 1977,” Bill Cauger said.

“Under suspicious circumstances,” added Lynn Cauger with a smile.

Rumor is, Lynn explained, that the bar owner and the drummer had a romance and soon after the romance ended the bar burned down.

“There was no proof,” Richmond said, “but it’s part of the bar’s legend.”

The burnt-out restaurant stayed unoccupied until Richmond signed a contract with Monroe County to lease the property in 1984.

“It took about $75,000 to get the old Conch Flyer up and running,” Richmond laughed. “It took a lot more to get this one open,” he said, looking around the large and bright new restaurant.

“Our kitchen has been in place and ready since December 2007,” Lynn said. “So you know we are anxious to have the opening.”

Joining the 21st Century has its obligations and schooling is one of them.

“We had to attend school to learn how to use the air-conditioning system,” Richmond said. “Our kitchen, everything in the new restaurant, is modern and needs getting used to, and that helps makes this whole move exciting.”

The entrance to the new restaurant holds a lot of history for everyone entering and exiting. The right wall as you enter has a collage of old photos and posters, some from the Pan Am era. Many of the photos are large reproductions of photos Tom Hambright, Keys Historian at the Monroe County Library, helped Richmond and the Caugers find.

“I bought some of the Pan Am posters on eBay,” Richmond said.

The wall on the left is made up of photos donated from longtime airport employees, retirees, and some come from Airport Director Peter Horton’s personal collection. The photos show the airport at different stages of its life.

Large model airplanes adorn sections of the restaurant’s colorful yellow walls.

“We had a customer at the old Conch Flyer who asked if he could display his model airplanes and maybe sell a few of them,” Richmond recalled. “When I saw them, I wanted them, so he made a sale, to me.”

Richmond and the Caugers said the terminal construction and lack of parking has kept many of the Conch Flyer’s local customers from coming in, but they hope to remedy that at the terminal’s grand opening on Feb. 25.

“We always had a loyal local following,” Bill said.

“We had locals that came in for our conch chowder and fritters,” Lynn said. “Those are going to stay on the menu, because everyone likes them.”

Once the new terminal opens the Conch Flyer will validate two hours of free parking, something they hope will be an incentive in bring the locals back.

“And, if Paris Hilton comes to town again . . .” Richmond laughed along with the Caugers.

A couple of years ago, the notorious socialite, Paris Hilton, was in town and sent a flunky into the bar, Bill recalled, and asked the bartender to close to the public, so she and her entourage could come in and relax without being bothered.

“Mike, the bartender pointed to the door and politely told him no,” Richmond finished the story.

“We’ve had a lot of Hollywood people come through here and stop for a bite to eat or a drink and none ever asked that,” Bill laughed. “Mike did the right thing.”

On Feb. 25, the doors of the new 21st Century Conch Flyer will open, its full-service bar and restaurant waiting for its first customers.

“We realize with all the new equipment, we may take awhile to get everything up and running smoothly,” Lyn said. “We’ve done all that is possible to do, before opening to the public, to make sure the quirks are out.”

Richmond and the Caugers stand together in the center of the empty restaurant, its size making them seem like toy dolls waiting for one of the many prop-driven model plans on the wall to land and take them away. They are excited and nervous as they wait for the doors to open and welcome in the 21st Century.