Carter Lake, Iowa - A Colorado landmark has found a second home in this Omaha suburb. Named Shake, Rattle and Roll when it was open in Sterling, the vintage 1950s-style diner assumed its new identity as the Hollywood Diner in April.

Owner Larry Richling said the restaurant's first 30 days have been wildly successful. So successful, in fact, that a second diner is on its way.

Last fall, Richling was vacationing in Colorado with his wife, Mary, when they needed a tank of gas. Richling thought the price was too high at the first station he passed.

The second station, in Sterling, was more reasonable.

While he was stopped for a fill-up, a shimmering building across the street caught his eye. The diner was vacant and had a "For Sale" sign in the window.

Richling, 51, has always had a passion for '50s memorabilia and had always dreamed of opening a diner, he said.

He crossed the street, walked off the diner's dimensions and returned home to Omaha.

Days later, the Shake, Rattle and Roll - and the ground it sat on - were his, a tidy $250,000 transaction. All that was left was getting the diner home. In December, Richling hired a crew to disassemble the prefab diner, load it onto a truck and drive it east.

Several days and about $50,000 later, it was unloaded onto a lot next to another of Richling's enterprises, the Country Inn Suites in Carter Lake, Iowa, near Omaha's Eppley Airfield. That's about six blocks from the dock of his River City Star riverboat.

"It's a nice fit," said Richling, "and it's a great location. The community has really embraced us."

He furnished the stainless- steel cafe with neon lights and, from his private collection, photographs of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. A full-service soda fountain and a drive-in theater - actually a plasma-screen TV that plays vintage movies at all hours - complete the decor.

The Hollywood Diner can hold more than 100 people inside and, when the weather cooperates, 46 on the patio. They can choose from a menu that includes the "Elvis, Baby" - peanut butter and bananas on white bread, fried - and the "To Sirloin with Love" steak and eggs.

"It is a different experience than what is currently available in the metropolitan area," Richling said. "The atmosphere is all about the sounds and the sights; the clanging of the plates, the sound of the open kitchen and the old-fashioned soda fountain make it interesting."

Six years ago Richling formed the Keystone Group, a company that owns apartment buildings, ministorage garages, the hotel, rentable bicycles, a riverboat and the catering company that serves it. And now that he has dabbled in the diner business, Richling is ready for more. He hopes to open as many as seven diners in the next few years.

"I just bought another diner on eBay for $150,000," he said last week from his Omaha office. "We're moving it from Jacksonville, Ill., into western Omaha."

Talk of franchising the Hollywood Diner has been bandied about, but Richling is taking a wait-and-see approach.

"We are doing our own thing right now, and we will see where the future leads," he said.

Originally published online here: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_2768935