Battle for the night The solution that dare not be discussed — keeping nightclubs open later — could diminish many of the concerns associated with Providence nightlife BY IAN DONNIS

PROVIDENCE CITY HALL — meaning the mayor, the city council, and the licensing department — want to wage a war on the city’s nightclubs. They say that’s not the case, but that is the practical result.

At issue are the problems — vandalism, fighting, disorderly behavior, and the like — that sometimes occur when thousands of people stream from downtown and Jewelry District clubs on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Some observers say there’s no more fighting or crime when clubs empty that there was 20 years ago. Critics, though, citing Providence’s increased popularity as a destination, assert that an excessive number of club patrons cross the line of unlawful behavior.

But the real question is why officials in Rhode Island’s capital, which tends to be fairly sleepy by day and a little more active, sometimes, by night, are trying to squelch one of the forces of economic vitality in the city.

In many ways, the debate over nightlife is a clash between competing visions of the city.

There will always be those that want to diminish — in the ostensible name of the greater good — the ability of law-abiding people to enjoy their leisure time. But even though there’s a clear distinction between recent shootings at some Olneyville venues, and quality-of-life concerns in the downtown-Jewelry District nightclub zone, proponents are ready to use a broad brush to stifle the ability of law-abiding citizens to enjoy themselves.

After several years of effort, proponents of more stringently regulated nightlife are ascendant, setting the stage for the Providence City Council to create a new Class N nightclub-licensing category with additional regulations. Supporters hold out hope that the envisioned changes — such as requiring nightclubs that remain open until 2 a.m. to stop admitting patrons one hour earlier — will reduce problems and curb a perceived last-minute influx of club-goers from outside the city. It’s entirely open to question, though, what this effort will accomplish, and the effects may well be more negative than positive for Providence.

The campaign for heightened regulation also largely ignores the proverbial elephant in the living room — the way in which thousands of departing bar and club patrons are expected to clear downtown and the adjacent Jewelry District as quickly as possible at closing time.

Even critics acknowledge that a very small fraction of nightlife denizens are responsible for most of the misbehavior. The sheer size and suddenness of the end-of—night exodus, however, creates traffic jams and makes it unfeasible for outnumbered police officers to enforce the law against quality-of-life crimes. The progressive solution would be allowing clubs to stay open later, say until 3 a.m., and curtailing admissions and alcohol sales at 2 a.m., so customers would gradually drift out, rather than leaving en masse. As it stands, though, this kind of approach has about as much of a chance as a Republican takeover of the General Assembly.

It’s not as if enforcement efforts to curb disorderly behavior and the other quality-of-life concerns sometimes associated with nightlife in the Jewelry District and downtown haven’t proven successful. In fact, Providence police credit an ongoing push against underage drinking in bars and clubs with substantially reducing these breaches and much of the related misbehavior.

The Class N nightclub licensing effort isn’t without some worthy goals, such as preventing, for instance, an enterprise that gains a license as a restaurant in a residential neighborhood from suddenly morphing into a nightclub. On the face of it, the idea of creating a separate licensing category for nightclubs (essentially defined as an alcohol-serving establishment with a capacity for between 200 and 10,000 people) seems reasonable. But some parts of the proposed new regulation, including preventing nightclubs from admitting patrons after 1 a.m., smack of small-town paternalism and punishing the many for the misdeeds of the few. It’s contrary to the enhanced stature of Providence — which is a city, after all — and efforts to build Rhode Island’s capital as a destination for dining, entertainment, conventions, and the like. It’s also worth remembering that nightlife, particularly Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, was a rare source of downtown vitality in the otherwise desolate days before anyone had ever heard of WaterFire.

And while the opportunity for those under 21 to go to live shows and dance nights seems safe for now, even the more liberal members of the Providence City Council want to require nightclubs to gain night-by-night approval for admitting under-21s. Some, like Rich Lupo, who likens night-by-night approval to the current process, are untroubled by the envisioned Class N license, calling it a good answer (provided that city officials don’t seek a prohibition on under-21 nights) to lingering quality-of-life concerns.

If the new measures are implemented and still don’t satisfy critics, however, it’s hardly a stretch to think that, emboldened by the precedent of prohibitionist regulation, they’ll renew their focus on eliminating under-21 nights — an effective way to kill the live music scene in clubs like Lupo’s.

THANKS TO ENABLING legislation that last year became law, the Providence City Council directed the Board of Licenses in late December to draft a separate licensing category for nightclubs. Speaking this week, licensing board chairman Andrew J. Annaldo says he’s hopeful that the board’s document will be drafted and returned to the council for approval within the next 30 days. It’s not unconceivable than opponents will make a stand at the council meeting to express their concern and displeasure, although Mayor David N. Cicilline, as a strong supporter of the proposal, is expected to back the measure.

Cicilline says he remains committed to the concept of vibrant nightlife in Providence as an integral part of the city’s identity. It’s good that the mayor recognizes the importance of the under-21 crowd to the live music scene and venues like Lupo’s. "I think we have a responsibility to do everything we can in terms of enforcement before we consider prohibiting [those under 21 from nightclubs]," he says. As far as the planned 1 a.m. deadline for cutting off admission to nightclubs open until 2 a.m., Cicilline contends that club denizens will adjust accordingly. "What it’s going to end up doing is bringing those people into the city earlier in the evening," he says. "I think in the long run it’s likely to have a positive impact on the nightclub business."

Many in the nightlife industry, however, are alarmed by what they see as the increasingly heavy hand of government regulation.

Nightlife impresario Michael Kent, who owns the Complex, among a number of other establishments, and leases the Strand (and, like several of the business owners mentioned in this story, is a Phoenix advertiser), for example, says he was amenable to a compromise that would have stopped nightclubs from admitting new patrons at 1:30 a.m. But he’s so troubled by the new nightlife measure, particularly the restriction on admitting patrons after 1 a.m., that he plans to seek a temporary injunction to prevent the rules from being implemented. Kent says the earlier deadline was surreptitiously imposed, and that Cicilline subsequently "back-doored" him to facilitate the relocation from Westminster Street of Lupo’s (the mayor declined to respond directly to this accusation), but more about this later.

After a 30 percent reduction in his business over the last year — something that Kent attributes to the fallout from the Station fire — and the outlay of more than $1 million on safety enhancements at his venues, the new regulation seems like insult on top of injury. (Nor does it help that the state sales tax has been raised from seven to eight percent.) "It will hurt business in the clubs," Kent says. "It will do absolutely nothing for the public or anyone else. It won’t stop noise. It won’t have any of the benefits [cited by proponents]. It’s nothing more than enabling legislation that tries to appease or bullshit the public into thinking the politicians are actually doing something, but it will have no benefit whatsoever."

Although the 30 minutes between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. may not seem like a long time, nightclubs make most of their money during the peak hours on three nights — Thursday, Friday, and Saturday — and eliminating the combined 90 minutes poses a significant loss of revenue.

Certainly, recent episodes of violence, including a fatal shooting in the parking lot of Sanctuary, an Olneyville nightclub, and a shooting at Club Therapy, another Olneyville club, are cause for concern. As city council president John J. Lombardi notes, however, questions remain about whether a police detail was supposed to be at Sanctuary on the night of the shooting. "If it’s true that the club applied for police presence and the police did not respond, that’s not a problem with the club," he says. "Someone dropped the ball somewhere. I think there’s some blame to go around. How does someone defend against a superceding criminal act? What dominion and control do we have over that?"

This kind of nuance seems lost on Councilwoman Josephine DiRuzzo, who shortly after the recent shootings, expressed her desire that the Board of Licenses consider eliminating 1 a.m-to-4 a.m. restaurant and nightclub licenses. Yet in rebutting DiRuzzo with an editorial on Tuesday, January 6, even the Providence Journal — hardly an advocate of unrestrained hedonism — called for a more focused approach: "Rather than using a blanket rule, we call upon the police and Board of Licenses to carefully monitor individual establishments and close them quickly when there are incidents . . . . After a disaster such as the Station nightclub fire, the first instinct is to pass a new law — for officials and others to then ignore until the next disaster. It is usually harder, but far more effective, to actually enforce at least a few of the old laws on the books."

Meanwhile, the impact of the new regulations would likely be greater for the owners of smaller clubs and niche bars, which get some of the spillover from clubs, than someone like Kent, who owns an array of entertainment entities. John Dorr, the owner of Mira Bar, an inconspicuous gay bar on Richmond Street, is a case in point. With a capacity of about 200, Mira Bar would fall just within the new definition of a nightclub. And although Dorr might be able to diminish his capacity to avoid being affected by the new regulations, he’d rather expand to an additional floor, in part to make up for insurance costs that have soared, he says, from $7500 to $33,000, in the last two years.

Dorr says his establishment doesn’t really get busy until 11 at night, and losing the ability to admit patrons for the last hour will hurt his business. His clientele comes late, often after dinner, a movie, or some other activity, he says, "because they don’t want to get smashed," and the typical patron spends $12 — the equivalent of the $7 cover charge and two drinks. Dorr favors the idea of keeping clubs open slightly longer at the end of the night — while curtailing admissions and alcohol service — to alleviate the closing-time crush, but he says the idea has gotten a cold reception.

Dorr, who has been in the nightclub business for 30 years, recalls how people living in Massachusetts towns like Randolph and Mansfield would go out in Boston in the old days, rather than Providence, because of its more appealing nightlife. Over time, he says, Providence became an enhanced destination and attracted more club-goers, thanks to a later closing time, better restaurants, WaterFire, the Providence Place Mall, and other attractions. Now, though, "Nightclubs in this town have been under siege for the last few years," Dorr says, and he’s fearful that the pending prohibition on admitting club patrons after 1 a.m. will lead many customers once again to go to Boston instead of Providence. With bars, restaurants, and other businesses facing less spin-off spending from club patrons, "I think the whole city is going to suffer from this," he says.