Battle for the night (continued)

THE QUESTION floats in the background of whether the city played fast and loose to get what it wanted with the long-discussed relocation of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel to the Strand on Washington Street, a move, through the rehab of the Peerless Building (which formerly housed Lupo’s), that will expedite the residential development of Westminster Street.

It’s positive, after years of glacial progress, that things to bring more vitality to downtown — the development of more residential housing, additional cafes and shops, RISD’s expansion across the river — seem to be suddenly coalescing. Still, rents for the new downtown apartments start close to $1000, leading some in the arts community to wonder who is going to inhabit them and raising the specter of a yuppie playground. The related question is whether nightlife and entities like Lupo’s, which helped to sustain Providence in its bleaker days, are now getting short shrift. Some nightlife entrepreneurs increasingly see the city — which supported a highly favorable tax package to help lure lottery maker GTECH to Providence last year — as anti-business.

No one believes this more than Kent. A controversial personality, the nightlife impresario says he has tried to be a good corporate citizen by, for example, chartering buses, spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the process, to shuttle customers to his clubs. Then, after being asked by Cicilline to accommodate the relocation of Lupo’s at the Strand, Kent says, "It will cost us money, probably, rather than making us money, but as a way to move the city forward and keep the peace, keep everyone happy . . . we struck a deal with Lupo and the mayor."

Kent, who leases the Strand, says Cicilline and his chief of staff, Mike Mello — who brokered the Lupo’s relocation deal — told him the nightclub ordinance would go back to a city council committee in December, so Kent would have a chance to express his concern about the ban on admitting patrons after 1 a.m. Instead, Kent says, "As soon as they got what they wanted [with the relocation of Lupo’s], they rushed this new ordinance through the city."

Noting that the Providence City Council delayed consideration of the nightclub licensing issue before approving it in late December, Cicilline says, "I don’t know the answer as to why particular members of the council acted or didn’t act," and he referred questions on the subject to the council. But as far as any agreement between Kent and the city, "That was an agreement that was brokered with the executive branch of government," says council president Lombardi. "The Strand is in my ward, and I literally read about it [the Lupo’s relocation agreement] in the paper. I would have loved to have weighed in on it."

(Kent also asserts that state Representative Paul Moura [D-Providence], the main sponsor of the related enabling nightclub legislation in the House, misled him by changing the deadline for admitting nightclub patrons for 1:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. Moura, though, says Kent was kept informed throughout the course of the legislation. "To say he was not included in any decisions that were made is totally inaccurate," Moura says. "He may not be happy with the 1 o’clock, but you can’t please everyone.")

Josh Miller, who owns the Hot Club and Trinity Brewhouse, and serves as president of the Downtown Merchants Association, is among those skeptical about the nightclub licensing effort. "You don’t punish the responsible if you enforce the existing ordinances," Miller says. "If the police feel they need it [the new licensing category] as a tool, I think it has to be fine-tuned, so it . . . doesn’t affect the responsible club owner."

Although concerns about the impact on live-music venues were allayed in the nightclub licensing law, "I still think there could be unintended consequences, having a negative impact," Miller says. "I think it’s a doubled-edged sword." As he notes, places that repeatedly break the law stress the process, so that other establishments suffer the consequences: "The responsible end up suffering with the irresponsible when something like this comes into effect."

BARNABY EVANS, the artist whose WaterFire installations have become an iconic signature for Rhode Island’s capital city, likens efforts to curb nightlife-related problems with the fight against terrorism: there’s so much that has to be done because of a relatively small number of troublemakers. Evans has seen this first-hand. "When the bars let out, usually after WaterFire, we do see a lot of craziness," he says, including the seeming appearance of drunken driving, and yelling and the throwing of bottles from passing cars. The situation has gotten so bad, Evans says, that his organization routinely hires a police officer to stand guard as WaterFire gear is dismantled in the early morning hours.

It’s this sort of misbehavior that led proponents like Michael Hogue of the Jewelry District Association and Dan Baudouin of the Providence Foundation several years ago to target nightlife-related problems in Providence. This effort gathered steam in 2000, partially as a response to the grisly carjacking slayings of two college students, although also as a misguided attempt to roll back the closing time for Providence bars and clubs, from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. In 2001, proponents set their sights on banning anyone under 21 from being able to go to a nightclub that serves alcohol. Although each of these campaigns ended short of the specific goal, supporters — a coalition that came to encompass city government, other neighborhood groups, Providence police and local universities — was persistent enough to remain focused on its long-term goals.

A level of frustration is understandable. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time in the Jewelry District at closing time, for example, has probably witnessed some obnoxious, loutish, and perhaps even violent behavior. Then again, although critics like Hogue, who resides in a chic Chestnut Street condominium, cite their support for vibrant nightlife, it remains open to question whether their vision for more restrained behavior jibes with the reality of life in an urban entertainment enclave. It’s also unfortunate that proponents of nightlife regulation, including the Cianci and Cicilline administrations, have responded with a prohibitionist approach, rather than one more in sync with the goal of promoting Providence as a destination city.

A logical place to start would be the logjam that results when the clubs and bars empty on weekend nights. As noted by Josh Miller, end-of-night problems seem less severe in other cities, like New York, that have later closing times, so people can leave over a longer period of time. "It’s the same phenomenon as a rush hour," Miller says of the status quo in Providence. "A lot of people are recognizing that now, and they may not be talking about it publicly, but they understand it as the root of the problem."

One of the obvious difficulties with keeping clubs open later is that the establishments would essentially be on their honor to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m. But at this point, even considering a pilot problem to smooth the dispersal of clubgoers by keeping clubs open later seems out of the question — a seeming reflection of the staying power of New England Puritanism and an aversion on the part of city officials to innovative thinking in this regard.

Instead, critics, after being rebuffed in eliminating under-21 nights, have focused their fire on thinning nightlife crowds by barring the entry of patrons after 1 a.m. Part of the rationale for this stems from the belief that an influx of people come from outside Providence, including Massachusetts and Connecticut, to make last call at nightclubs. "I would just encourage you to go to some of our nightclubs at 1 o’clock," says Cicilline, since detail officers report a substantial number of people arriving after that time. Yet if large numbers of people truly want to come to Providence for last call, the pending nightlife regulation will do nothing to prevent them from going to a bar instead.

Even some bar owners, like Carolyn Blake MacAndrew, of Blake’s Tavern on Washington Street, see under-21 dance nights as a big part of the problem. She draws a distinction between the younger patrons who go to see live music and those who attend dance clubs, describing only the latter group as problematic. "They’re all high on Ecstasy and running half-naked in the streets," says Blake MacAndrew, the vice president of the Downtown Merchants Association. Still, despite her criticism, she still believes that allowing bars and clubs to remain open later would help to alleviate problems, changing an equation in which police are greatly outnumbered by exiting club-goers. "Despite what a lot of people in their ivory towers may think, there are a lot of people getting out of work" late at night who then go for a drink downtown, Blake MacAndrew says. "Wouldn’t it be nice if they had more time to collect themselves and leave the establishment in a reasonable amount of time?"

It’s worth noting that the embrace of community policing by the Cicilline administration — a long overdue situation in the city — is already credited with diminishing the frequency of problems associated with nightlife.

In the past, "The kids we were speaking with were telling us it’s common knowledge that the drinking age in Providence is 18," says Lieutenant Timothy Lee, who oversees the downtown area. But a campaign that began last June — employing underage volunteers, arrests of bartenders and underage drinkers, and other tactics — has substantially reduced underage drinking, arrests for disorderly behavior, and the like, Lee says. "Is it completely handled? I would say, ‘No,’ " he adds, but police have delivered a message that underage drinking won’t be tolerated.

Incidentally, Lee notes that Michael Kent’s clubs "as a whole, do a very good job of enforcement." When underage volunteers were sent into a number of Kent’s clubs, "they weren’t served." The lieutenant nonetheless questions whether the Class N license goes far enough. Although he recognizes that the importance of under-21s to the live music scene poses another issue, Lee favors doing away with under-21 nights, since some underage club goers will invariably get access to alcohol. True enough. It’s also true, though, that people under 21, who can gamble and serve in the military, are probably not having that much difficulty getting access to alcohol even when they’re not in bars and nightclubs.

On the whole, Lee says, "I think the city as a whole will be better off with a more focused [licensing] effort. I think we have to consider more than just the nightclub owners in the downtown scheme of things. The nightclub business isn’t being shut down or forced out, it’s just being more regulated to try to make it more user-friendly to everyone." Like Cicilline and other supporters of the new regulation, Lee describes the pending 1 a.m. deadline for getting into clubs as a deterrent to a last-minute influx of intoxicated revelers to the city.

Kent, however, says that increasing the amount of regulation for a legitimate businessman like himself will offer an advantage to those fly-by-night operators who skirt the law, while bringing about more keg parties and other sorts of unregulated partying.

Similarly, Josh Miller, proprietor of the Hot Club and Trinity Brewhouse, mentions how his Budweiser salesman describes how sales went way up in South County bars and liquor stores after the URI campus went dry, "as if that’s going to make college kids stop drinking." It makes Miller wonder aloud, "What are the long-term effects when you become more prohibitive? It may be more unsupervised drinking with other problems . . . Is that solving the problem or is that just creating a more difficult problem?"

The police crackdown on underage drinking suggests the possibilities of what can happen when illegal behavior — rather than the broader concept of nightlife — is targeted for attention. A two-track approach — enforcing the law against establishments that break it and thinning the end-of-the-night exodus of club-goers through later closing times — offers promise for curbing many of the concerns cited by proponents of greater nightlife regulation. The question is, why aren’t they more fully considering it?

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@phx.com.