A sign of old times: Lee’s Summit team works to preserve a piece of classic downtown

The hand-breaded tenderloins were the special of the day inside Topsy’s Cafe.

But there was something special on the outside of the Concordia, Missouri, diner on the last Tuesday of June: The cafe’s vintage sign, returned thanks to the skills of Lee’s Summit businessmen and the generosity of a Lee’s Summit donor.

Missouri Main Street, a statewide preservation and economic development nonprofit, saw the potential and made the connection between Topsy’s Cafe owner Jessica Marlin, and Dave Eames and Ben Wine, owners of Fossil Forge Design in Lee’s Summit.

Marlin, Eames and Wine all love preserving downtowns.

Marlin bought the 109-year-old cafe two years ago. She found 1950s sign in an attic above the diner and, through Missouri Main Street, connected with Fossil Forge to restore the sign.

“We always had an affinity for old materials and traditional design,” Eames said. “If we can save a sign and put it back up, that is top shelf.”

Good design, Eames explained, “gives your town personality and history.”

Eames said the Topsy’s Cafe sign was in great condition with working neon. The work, he explained, wasn’t overwhelming. In fact, there was a goal to preserve the sign as much as possible.

“We wanted to leave it a little aged,” Eames said.

Eames said downtowns’ older buildings are mostly made of traditional materials, like brick, that age well.

“We didn’t want it to stand out in that way,” Eames said of the sign. “We wanted to look like it always had been there.”

Good design, Eames said, “gives your town personality and history.”

While the Fossil Forge team was working on the sign, a Lee’s Summit resident came into the shop on unrelated business.

He noticed the sign, and recalled how his wife had worked at the Topsy’s Cafe in the mid-1970s.

The Lee’s Summit resident offered to pay any costs but wanted to remain anonymous. That offer, Eames said, shows “good people are all around us.

“For a stranger to do that for another stranger — with all the dark clouds of the past year — that is the essence of who we are,” Eames said.

Marlin herself first worked at the diner at age 12 when she took a dishwasher job. Her aunt owned the diner. Marlin waited tables there until she was 20.

Marlin wanted to bring Topsy’s Cafe back the 1950s by using not only the original sign but a lot of available memorabilia.

“Everyone has modern restaurants; I want to bring this one back to what it used to be,” she said in a press release.

As for the sign, Marlin said: “Everybody in our town is so excited to see it.”