By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Polish your cowboy boots and shine your belt buckle. There’s a new saloon in town.

It’s called Club Texas.

“For the people who like country and western music, it’s their place,” said owner Mark Hogan, an ex-rodeo worker from South Carolina who has spent $30,000 cleaning and remodeling the former Coliseum on Center Street.

He opened the club’s bar on Wednesday. On Thursday, workers were repainting the building’s sign. And by Saturday night, he hopes to have live music on his rebuilt stage.

That’s only a start, though.

Eventually, he aims to sell Western-style clothes in a side room, serve authentic Tex-Mex food and install a new mechanical bull.

Within only a week, he plans to decorate the 9,100-square-foot club with Western art and rodeo memorabilia, install a computerized music system and lay a 28- by 40-foot hardwood dance floor.

“We’ll be wide open by next Saturday,” Hogan said in a South Carolina drawl that also hints of San Antonio.

Tall, lean and weathered, Hogan first came to Maine in the winter of 1998, working for a power company during that season’s ice storm. He liked Maine, its pace and its climate.

“It’s cooler here in the summertime,” he said. So he moved up here.

He ran AAA Appliance & Restaurant Service & Supplies in Auburn. Soon, he realized there was little around for someone with his tastes. There are clubs in Gray, Waterville and Mechanic Falls, but nothing like what he wanted.

And though Lewiston-Auburn has clubs with blues and pop music, there’s nothing for the country crowd, he said.

“I did my research,” said Hogan, who hired a company to send out 750 surveys in the area. More than 90 percent of people returned the questionnaires and nearly all answered favorably, he said.

He began working on the Coliseum site about two months ago, earning city approval on Monday and his state licenses two days later.

To make sure he can control the crowds, he plans to run the club on memberships, purchased when people pay their first cover charge for a live band. If people get rowdy, their memberships can be revoked.

Hogan’s aim is to create a place where people can have a beer, a dance, a conversation or hear a few good songs, he said.

“The older generation has no place to go,” Hogan said. “They don’t want to hear teeny-bopper music.

“Hopefully, this is what they’re looking for,” he said.