News-Gazette Photos/Mary McIntee Richard Potter, a KAST Club member and shuffleboard enthusiast, shoots a disk to the other end of the board during a game at the KAST Club's final meeting on Monument Avenue in Kissimmee March 20.

For more than 30 years, you would never need a bloodhound to find Gerard Lemenager.

The 84-year-old Kissimmee resident could be found most weekday mornings playing shuffleboard at the KAST (Kissimmee All-State Tourists) Club.

Lemenager and his wife “Mac” honeymooned in Kissimmee in 1952, and were regular visitors to the city before finally retiring here.

“My father used to play shuffleboard here and my grandfather before that,” Lemenager said.

But that family tradition ended last Saturday. The KAST Club, its shuffleboard court and the club meeting room have a date with a demolition crew. Club members held a farewell luncheon and one last game of shuffleboard to mark the end of an era.

At the height of shuffleboard's popularity, tourists and winter visitors would crowd the park, awaiting their turn for a game of shuffleboard. The club's 1958 directory listed more than 1,300 members. That number dwindled to less than 80 members in 2010.

“We tried to keep it going,” Lemenager said of the club’s efforts to keep the shuffleboard court open.

But their appeal to the city came too late. The club maintains the court, which is in remarkably good shape, looking far younger than its 70-plus years.

Nick Celli, the club’s newly elected president, said he wishes the membership acted sooner to save the historic building and court.

The city of St. Petersburg had plans on demolishing its historic shuffleboard court as well, Celli said, but the membership of that club took early action and began holding events and activities, getting a lot of people involved and the court was saved.

The city of Kissimmee already has begun work for the park. City Manager Mark Durbin said. Construction will focus first on the middle of the park along Ruby Street, which will eventually become a tree-lined fountain plaza leading down to the new wharf.

After the roadways are completed, the city will focus on reworking the park itself. Improvements will include lighted pathways, concession buildings and the repair of the seawall.

City officials said the entire project would take about three years to complete.

Shuffleboard was one of the great pastimes for retirees and winter visitors in Florida. According to Sportsknowhow.com, the first shuffleboard courts were built in Daytona Beach in 1913 and it sparked the outdoor shuffleboard fad. Courts sprang up all over the state, with the most elaborate court built by the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, which had more than 5,000 members playing on 110 courts during its heyday. The sport was at its most popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Kissimmee club also enjoyed its greatest popularity during the era. The club is best known nationally for sponsoring the construction of the Monument of States in downtown Kissimmee. The monument was built as a symbol of unity in 1942 after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. The monument contains rocks, fossils, pieces of old buildings and more from all 48 states that made up the country at the time.

While the monument will be a permanent reminder of how popular the club once was, that was little comfort to club members Saturday.

“We have basketball courts and tennis courts all over the city,” Celli said, “but nothing for the seniors.”

While the city has a senior center, located off of Neptune Boulevard, it is too far for the area’s elderly, he said.

And the city has plans to relocate many of the club's other activities such as bingo, dominoes and cards to the Oak Street recreation center, but that will not include shuffleboard.

“It's sad,” Lemenager said. “This is one of the best shuffleboard courts in the country and people are still interested in playing.”

“I think if we only had more members,” Celli said, the city wouldn't be demolishing the courts and building. “If we had 200 members, we could have gotten more attention.”

Celli said he is hoping the city will help the KAST Club find a new home, including a place for shuffleboard.

The group has to vacate the club by Thursday.