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Thursday, July 13, 2006

Breaking News, Updated: Nickels Proposes Anti-Nightlife Legislation; Fed-up Club Owners Organize Opposition7

Posted by on July 13 at 15:17 PM

Sealing his reputation as perhaps the most anti-nightlife mayor in Seattle history, Mayor Greg Nickels has proposed a new nightclub licensing program that combines the worst aspects of the noise ordinance, good-neighbor agreements, and former City Attorney Mark Sidran’s unconstitutional added-activities ordinance. (The legislation is the newest bullet point in the mayor’s anti-club agenda. For more, check out last week’s feature story.) In response, club owners (including some frustrated members of the mayor-appointed Nightlife Task Force, which was supposed to sign off on the ordinance) have banded together as the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association, which held its first meeting yesterday, just hours after mayoral staffer Jordan Royer sent the legislation to task force members.

The draft ordinance, which nightclub attorney David Osgood calls “toxic,” “added activities-plus,” and “ten times worse than anything Mark Sidran ever drafted,” includes the following provisions:

• A “nightclub” is defined as any large (50-person capacity or higher) drinking establishment that offers entertainment after 10 pm, including everything from comedy to burlesque to live music to poetry. The new law would therefore apply to just about every venue in the city.

• Nightclub owners would be held responsible for any violations of the new nightclub standards on their “premises,” which according to the ordinance now includes not just the club itself but private parking lots used but not owned by the nightclub.

• Even more egregiously, club owners would be responsible for preventing patrons from carrying weapons or drugs onto the premisesnot making efforts to prevent, preventingand would be required to contact law enforcement “if they either observer are informed of any possible violations of law occurring either on the premises or in the impacted public areas.

• Speaking of which, here’s the definition of “impacted public areas”: “public property adjacent to the nightclub premises where either patrons or prospective patrons gather.” This puts club owners in charge of not only policing the sidewalk outside their clubs (AKA doing the police department’s job for them) but also of anticipating who might be a “prospective” patron, whatever that means, and controlling their behavior, too. This section is a recipe for selective enforcement against clubsthe kind of selective enforcement that was aimed at Oscar’s II, a club with mostly black patrons that the city tried to shut down six years ago.

• The law includes a new noise ordinance that would apply only to nightclubs, stipulating that any noise “audible to a person of normal hearing” outside a club is grounds for yanking its nightclub licensea totally subjective standard that would give neighborhood residents (wealthy condo owners in Belltown, for example) complete control over clubs’ nighttime activities.

• The city can require clubs to screen all patrons for drugs or weapons, limit the days and times of entertainment, require extra soundproofing, and limit crowd size beyond the limits already codified in city law. Even worse, the conditions the city may impose “are not limited to” the conditions in Nickels’s legislation; that means the mayor can add any new conditions he wants, whenever he wants.

• Applications for nightclub licenses, which would presumably be filed well before a club opens, would have to include the name and work schedule of every manager at the clubinformation club owners couldn’t reasonably be expected to know months before a club has opened.

• The police chief or director of the Executive Administration office can “summarily suspend” a club license, with no hearing or discussion, if he or she “reasonably determines that the continued operation” of the club “poses an immediate threat of serious injury or damage to person or property. The suspension shall take effect immediately.” This is exactly the sort of thing that drove club owners bonkers when Mark Sidran was fighting for the added-activities ordinance, of which Nickels’s proposal is basically a revised version.

• Nightclub license applications would be reviewed by five separate county and city departments, any one of which could scuttle the application. Additionally, the city may also distribute applications to “the Washington State Liquor Control Board, and other agencies, community councils and organizations the Director determines may have information relevant to a decision on the application,” giving anti-nightclub neighbors free rein to raise frivolous objections to club applications, potentially delaying application approvals.

• A license could be denied if the owner, operator or manager has, in the past year, managed, owned or operated a club that had its liquor license yanked or that was determined to be a public nuisancea completely over-the-top requirement, particularly as it pertains to managers who may not have even been on shift when the liquor violation occurred.

• Club employees would be responsible for maintaining security within 100 feet of the club a half-hour before and after closing time: something they are not currently legally requiredor, for that matter, allowedto do.

• Clubs would be responsible for picking up litter not just inside and around the club, but on the “adjacent” premises.

Oh, and if a club gets its license suspended for any of the above reasons, it would be shut down automatically for 30 days. Three suspensions and the city shuts it down for good.

The newly formed Nightlife and Music Association, which currently has about 40 members, has meetings planned throughout July. If it grows as much as organizers hope, music promoter David Meinert says, “it could be bigger and more powerful than JAMPAC,” the now-defunct music-industry lobby group whose work was instrumental in overturning the draconian Teen Dance Ordinance. Meinert, who pushed for the creation of the city’s music office in 2003, says, “We should judge the effectiveness of the music office on how this goes forward. If this is what we get with an advocate, why have a music office at all?”

What’s not in Nickels’s ordinance? Any help for clubs whatsoever. There are, of course, regulatory solutions that don’t put the entire burden on clubs. A few examples: Twenty-four-hour liquor licenses; requiring people who move into noisy nightlife districts to sign waivers acknowledging they know the nature of the businesses around them; and requiring better noise insulation on new and refurbished condos and apartments, not just clubs. Other ideas?


CommentsRSS icon

I can't believe I voted for this guy.

so what are the steps that this proposal has to go thru in order to become law? Does it require council approval? If so, my guess is DOA.

Yes, it requires council approval.

FUCKED UP

Most of this shit is completely uncalled for and almost impossible. If there was a handbook on how to piss off the local nightlife industry, this would be the leading example. Next he's going to say, "No one under 18 and over 21 can dance in the same room at the same time."

We got a double crossing trojan horse at city hall:(

Nickels uber alles.

Everyone seems to have forgotten one thing.

The Mayor can propose anything he wants.

But only the Council can enact legislation and ordinances and budgets.

So, this is more of a line in the sand by Greg, saying This is What I Want, to which the Council will probably say Nobody Cares, Get Back To Work.

oh, and wait until the Belltown and Downtown nightclubs get a whiff of Greg's plans for what to do about nighttime parking for diners and dancers - yup, we're talking meter rates at night.

Only if the Council grows a pair, the occurance of which is far from a foregone conclusion.

What a douchebag (and a Chicago native, to boot!)

We are losing good musicians and music industry professionals (producer Tucker Martine is the latest to leave) to Portland at an increasingly alarming rate. This will do nothing to help, obviously. If anything, Nickels should be examining why are our artists are LEAVING, fer chrissakes.

Get a grip people, we wouldn't be having these problems if you'd just drink water and be satisfied with that.

I hear the nightlife in Bellevue is great!

What this means is less people will go to bars and clubs, and more people will go to house parties -- like the one in the Blue House on Republican a few months ago, no?

I like the litter policy, but "Mayor Sidran" isn't sounding so bad now.

Hey all, take a deep breathe. First off, even though I love Erica Barnett and am happy for her coverage of his issue, I think it is very unfair to call Nickels the most anti Nightlife mayor in Seattle history. This is the mayor who helped get rid of the Teen Dance Ordinance, opened the Music Office, funded Vera, helped Vera move to the Seattle Center and helped it with it's Capitol Campaign (go to www.vivavera.org to donate by the way), and has time and again stood by venues while they have been attacked by people trying to blame violence on music. Compared to Shell and and Rice (remember WTO and The Teen Dance Ordinance?? Rice was responsible for writing the TDO and Shell for keeping it and overseeing WTO), Nickels is great. Remember Erica wasn't in town for these Mayors nor during the Sidran era where Mark 'wanna be Guilianni' Sidran shut down 33 minority owned nightclubs.

Right now the ordinance is a PROPOSAL. A poorly written one for sure, but no where near being law. I wish the City would have come to the table with a halfway decent proposal instead of the offensive piece of poo we have in front of us now, but it is not the final version, and the good people on the Mayor's staff are listening to the industry and seem to be willing to make changes. Keep in mind that while the Police are crazy on this stuff, Mayoral Staffers like James Keblas, Regina Labelle and Marco Lower are sane and great. And remember that in past administrations there was never a table for the music and nightlife business to be at, so give Nickels a ton of props for involving us and taking our input seriously. During Rice or Shell, this ordinance would have been crafted by the Police and City Attorney, have been far worse and passed without question. Now, the Mayor is listening, is willing to make changes, and then when there is a final ordinance, it has to pass a city council who's president is pro nightlife friend Nick Licata, and we have other pro music members like Conlin, Steinbrueck and Rasmussen.

Bottom line, be skeptical, but remember that this Mayor uses process to learn and revise proposals so they become better. Let the process happen and THEN judge it, don't freak out in the middle of the process.

This is not the same Council as 1999-2000. Judy Nicastro and Heidi Wills were allies in this fight and now they are gone. Della, Clark, and Rasmussen weren't Councilmembers in those days so they don't have a track record on these issues.

The only process I see this leading to is Greg dropping to his knees and giving all the condo developers a blowjob.

It's "Schell".

Dave (Meinert)

Thanks for tossing some reality towards ECB.

Keep in mind, wasn't this the same publication that started the whole, Oddfellows Club is a Nazi front thing a few years back? Umm, who was doing the booking there at that time?

:-)

While many of the rants on these pages are clearly passionate, please keep in mind that things like facts have never gotten in the between the Stranger Writers and it's readership.

I'm with Meinert on the city council part of this equation goes -- I think this proposal is dead even before arrival.

And although Pork Chop may be a better mayor than Rice and Schell were on music issues, I'd trade him in a heartbeat when it comes to human/social services, public health, or drug policy reform. He's been a friggin disaster on these issues.

Schell. And he was by far a worse Mayor, expecially on these issues, than Nickels.

This issue is definitely not as simple as blowing the condo owners. We like most cities in the US are facing growing urban density while still promoting nightlife. These two things often come into conflict. There are many ways to deal with it, but make no mistake it has to be dealt with. Nickels is bringing people together to find something that works for everyone. This is tough as the different sides on the issue don't see eye to eye. Through into that the problems that have occurred at Mr Lucky and Larry's, and there is a contentous political atmostphere at best. Yes, condo owners (ie downtown residents who do have rights too) play into the final solution, but if this was only about Nickels blowing them, there would be no advisory group negotiating for a more reasonable ordinance. So again, it might not be 'cool' in some world where hating the man is always the right side to take, but this isn't finished and it could come out ok. Keep the pressue on, but be sensible about it.


The Mayor commissioned and hopefully read the Economic Study on music. Knowing everything he knows, having the staff that he has (and has had for years), why would he propose this?

i can't believe the stranger endorsed this guy!!!

Did you just say Final Solution?

'tis true the Stranger was responsible for the very irresponsible coverage of the Oddfellows Hall back in the day, right after I was booking it, and the long run result is going to condos on the property. Not to mention a big part of the reason we don't have a major park in the lake union biotech development is the Stranger. So while the Stranger is AWESOME in many ways, it sometimes need to be toned. Although, I have to say, Erica seems to be the only writer out there really covering this issue, and the other publications are really lame for not giving it the attention it deserves. So cudos to Erica and The Stranger for being in touch with this and being able to quickly write and post about inside info.

I hope the owners can win out over this.

hey Paul in Seattle, it's "its."

I live in Belltown, and have for about 4 years, an it has changed a great deal. When people says "why did you move there if you know it'd be noisy?", I don't think they understand that the neighborhood was managable then. Now it isn't.

As a downtown resident, I want a solution that works for everyone, not one that is arbitrary and punative to club owners.

When downtown residents have to organize themselves to force a club (Twist) to be responsible by using a Good Neighbor Agreement, that's a sign the system is broken. Nickels and the Council need to come up with a regulatory framework that doesn't screw anyone over.

Frizzelle - why in the world are you correcting Paul in Seattle for writing "it's" instead of "its?" (Maybe he's a friend of yours and it's an inside joke? Cripes I hope so.)

Do you actually want regular people to post on SLOG or would you prefer that only those of us with perfect writing skills do so? Should we all be wary of getting corrected?

That said, I am of the opinion that correcting the spelling of people's NAMES is not nearly as petty (e.g. Schell rather than SHELL).

(I did not run spell check, apologies to all)

Christopher,

Thanks for the editing.

As you'll notice, I am ripping on the stangers fact checking and reputation, not your ability to write.

Obviously, I am not a writer

Has anyone thought about the construction quality side of this? As developers build dense buildings in the heart of a city inexpensively...therefore cheap materials and not enough sound proofing...it is just not enough. Of course, you're going to hear something. You live in a thin walled box. But then again, you bought a $250k condo in the heart of the city. You get what you paid for. There are trade offs. The cabinets are visible and you see the quality. The sound proofing isn't visible...

not only that, but I don't think his correction was correct...

it's Schell = it is Schell

Wow, Barnett exaggerating, providing no context and getting basic facts wrong? Shocking! Shocking!

please note the Will that posted ain't me.

And it used to be Schellenberg. At least that's what his neice is named. Nice condo in Nice, too (was visiting, figured what the hey).

The story Meinert's referring to—"The He-Man Jew-Haters' Club," a 1995 piece by Matt Richter about racism and anti-Semitism, and right-wing lunacy at the Odd Fellows Hall (which we re-ran earlier this year)—was far from "irresponsible." Slog readers, judge for yourselves. Here's an excerpt, about one of the men Matt met at an Odd Fellows barbecue:

It was in 1992, while running the Gritz campaign in Washington, that Harry was found guilty in King County of fourth-degree assault for stabbing a man three times in the chest and once in the ear. Harry claims that the man showed up at his door already stabbed. He refers to Klan cross-burnings as “a Christian practice,” and his Wednesday morning cable-access television show, Truths and Revelations, routinely features Holocaust denials, Christian Identity speakers, and ultra-right conspiracy theorists. Harry identifies himself as a member of the Christian Identity, a sect that, among other things, believes that blacks, Jews, and darker-skinned peoples are genetically deficient. Identity speakers refer to blacks as “mud people,” and African Americans, according to Harry, should not be Christians. They are “better suited to be Muslims.”

Of the Hitler worship rampant in his party, Harry has said, in an interview with David Newman for The Stranger, “Adolf Hitler’s regime, you might look at it as a necessary—I don’t want to say evil… it’s a necessary circumstance.”

And here's the link: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=31951.

Dawdy is Paul in Seattle.

This may be just a proposal at this point, but that doesn't mean it can't to a lot of damage.
NIMBYs now know how far the mayor is willing to go on their behalf, and unfortunetly, most of them are more political than your neighborhood club goer. Most club patrons don't know anything about these policies, and don't care. The council will vote on the side of their constituents. If they're hearing from the property owners and renters that clubs bother them and they are supportive of the mayor's plan, while the council doesn't hear anything or next to nothing from the club patrons, who do you think they're going to vote in favor of?

Ha-Hah!

If, as Mr. Meinert says, “the good people on the Mayor's staff are listening to the industry and seem to be willing to make changes,” then why did all these heavy-handed and irrational parameters end up in the proposal in the first place? Why the draconian approach toward confronting this issue? If they truly wanted to work with the industry, why didn’t they consult with them before making this proposal?

As for the condo owners and residents of these high-density areas, they should’ve known that if you move to Belltown, Pike/Pine, or Pioneer Square, you should expect inherent noise from street level. It’s part and parcel of living in certain parts of the city, don’t you think?!

Actually, as I recall, Paul Schell's birth name was Schlactenhaufen or something like that.

Considering what a knob Nickels has been, I'm starting to miss him...

Wow, that's a lot of clampdown. And accompanied by a proportional lot of bile from ECB.

At the very least, half of this proposal is utter crap, probably unconstitutional or unethical, and doesn't help anyone this legislation is supposedly meant to help (except, of course, for the suburban transplants living in condos). There are some reasonable measures that I think people are jumping to conclusions on... but that's a LOT of stuff for one piece of legislation. I'll need to take a better look later on tonight.

People better raise hell, though. This absolutely should not get off the drawing board as it stands.

enigma raises a good point regarding how this plays out amongst the general public. the consumers/voters that would be most negatively impacted by such legislation are notoriously complacent in their political actions, particularly on a local level.

how many smoking bar patrons are still bitching about the ban yet, when pressed, would admit to not even making it to the polls that day?

there are also strong economic factors to consider. condo owners have more at stake than the 20-something clubgoers that live in rented studios. they also have more dough for political contributions.

i agree with meinert in that this story is still unfolding and there's no need to panic or jump to conclusions. although, i'm sure that's what folks said about [insert politcal nightmare here].

I'm going to let the Oddfellows thing alone for now, just keep in mind that while there were a couple of Nazi members, there was more to the story than was reported and the end result could have been better had it been looked into further. My point being that if you look just at this proposal, Nickels does look horrible, BUT, if you look deeper and into the history of past Mayors, maybe it ain't so horrible.

Dale's point about contruction standards is a GREAT one. Something I have brought up several times over the last two years is why are there just new regulations being proposed for clubs? why not new and stricter building regulations. Seems like the proposal is targeting just one side of the problem. There is no argument that developers have to take some responsibility as do parking lot owners (who are making bank), and there should be new regulations for them as well. If someone can hear noise outside a club above a certain level, the club should have to turn the volume inside down or get better insulation. but likewise, if someone inside a building can hear the noise outside that is under a certain level, then they should be made to close their windows or get better sound insulation. And when mitigating this stuff, someone needs to check that the building where the noise complaints are eminating from is up to code, and if not, the builders should be fined and made to bring it up to code. And if there are problems in a parking lot - private property and a business - then the parking lot should be help accountable. Maybe we need to make sure parking lots close by 1am. That would definitely help the problem.

As for why this proposal was made as is Burton, I agree. It should have been vetted better internally by the City before it was put out to the advisory board for comment. But while that was a mistake, it doesn't take away from the fact that there are several level heads that this proposal will be vetted through before it becomes law. And they did consult the industry, in fact this is a proposal sent to members of the industry for their feedback. Again, this is NOT the final ordinance.

And expecting noise is one thing, getting your building peed on, getting assulted or shot, people screaming, music blaring, is another. There needs to be a balance.

But c'mon, this Mayor is pro-nightlife and pro music. Really. I think at the end of the day this will work out. Of course if not, it's the warpath for sure.

The only thing worse than a bad idea is a bad idea kept secret. It's pretty rare for this administration to be vetting a proposal BEFORE putting a ribbon around it and sending it to Council as a finished product.

I think (and like my name indicates I'm a big critic) it's a GOOD thing that the task force, Stranger readers, and other members of the public will have a chance to make changes to this thing BEFORE it's transmitted to the Council.

Productive controversy is one thing, but if it's too personalized it can also just serve to affirm the standard practice of keeping a proposal secret in the development stage. That approach insures that bureaucrats are the only people who influence and write policy, rather than involving those people with real world experience in the development phase.

So, I say - thanks Mayor for sharing your proposal with the public and being willing to make changes before sending the bill to the Council.

Regarding comments from "not a nickels fan, but!": This wasn't something that the mayor's offices handed over to us or made public--it was obtained from an intrepid outside source. Perhaps they had plans to make it public (or maybe it lives somewhere on the web), but I never saw anything until it was handed to me.

This was a long, long time coming.
If those who now cry out had been a bit more critical and on the ball about the Mr. Lucky's of Seattle this need not have come pass.
It's true many clubs and bars are well run, like the Crocodile for example.. This is not about them and they have no reason to worry. They already meet the expected standard.
This is about the clubs that have to be told repeatedly to turn it down, to not deal drugs, to not have gun fights etc, etc.
As a grown up. I side with Greg. When people are getting shot at it is time to shut the party down.
If your all about random shootings continue to post.

Zander,

That sounds nuts too. So because some people acted badly at one club, we should threaten to shut down nightlife citywide? This sort of dialogue and reasoning is why is why politics is so difficult. The level headed people are often not heard over the screaming of people with ridiculous ideas.

Dave-

I did not say shut down night life city-wide. I did infer that if some clubs refuse (repeatedly) to police themselves they should be policed.
Laws are not created with our better angels in mind.
I suggest to you that the "night life scene" come up with some "neighorborly" rules they can live by before rules are imposed on them.
That was the gist of Nickels effort. It seems to have been rejected in total. So now we move to plan B.
You have your uncompromising loud mouth associates to thank for all this.
Pardon my duplicate post.


"If your all about random shootings continue to post."

WTF? Did you really mean that???

Unbelieveable.

Hannah - I consider giving copies to a dozen or so citizens serving in an advisory capacity and not sworn to secrecy "made public." How do you think your "intrepid outside source" got a copy?

NANFB--Fair enough, and yes, I know how he got a copy. Furthermore, I think your point about productive controversy is well-stated and relevant. But the impression I had from your post was that you were thanking Nickels for being forthright with the general, music-loving public--and bar owners in general. If he was being forthright, the news would have been received from the mayor's office, not via a local bartender (who, incidentally, wasn't on the mayor's task force). Obviously, this wasn't common knowledge until ECB put up her dialog-driving post--quite a different context than public solicitation of feedback from the Nickels camp.

Why do politicians always hate fun?

Why Mayor Nickels, why? I'm keeping my eye on the council members who decide to go for this crap.

So we're going to have security guards searching us every time we go into a bar that has music?

WHAT HAPPENED TO FREEDOM?!!!??!!???

I'm joining the Libertarian Party.

Just a reminder all....this is a process. While the proposal on the table does seem like an attack on nightlife, it's far from a finished ordinance. Keep in mind that the City has to negotiate with nightclub owners, music fans, and neighborhood activists like our poster Zander, who seems to be suggesting that we must be for unreasonable, over the top regulation or we support random shootings. The side driving the ridiculous regulations is the Police via the City Attorney's office along with 'neighborhood activists'. It is not the Mayor you have to thank for how crazy the regulations seem to be, it is the activists, the Police and City Attorney's office. The Mayor needs to try to negotiate through all of these, and often times the loudest get heard first. Counter this ridiculous rhetoric by writing the Mayor and letting him know you supported him in the past and appreciated his pro-music stances and want him to stand tall in the face of the whacko activists who keep screaming loudly. Politicians need to hear from the public, and right now they are hearing more from crazies than they are from the massive amount of people who support the areas nightlife. Keep in mind there are almost as many people coming to Seattle at night as there are in the day. That means the users and supporters of Seattle nightlife far outnumber the residents of the poorly built condos who have moved into areas like Belltown and now want it to be quiet like a gated suburban community at night. But the Mayor and the Council need to hear from all of us, and we need to be reasonable in our responses, it will make us all look and sound much wiser than the crazed activists.

I think a lot more people might join up with the Nightlife and Music Association if they knew how to get a hold of them. It doesn't say anything about this in any of these articles. Does anyone know anything about this?

People should be able to celebrate all night long. Turning all the drinking people onto the street at 2am is causing a lot of fights, some shootings, car accidents and DWI's. Making everyone hit the streets at the same time is about the single most stupid policy I can imagine.

Also, the person who pointed out that the builders are dodging the bullet was right-on. More solid construction is not only better for sound control, it's safer in case of fire and earthquakes too. Will the Council have the balls to approach the builders about this? They should.

Ditto parking companies. Now they just charge you out the wazoo and provide no security at all. They should be required to install at least video security if not patrolling unarmed security guards who can alert police when situations are developing in parking lots before someone gets killed or beaten half-to-death.

ON THE OTHER HAND, people should not be allowed to roam around inside clubs with concealed weapons.

People should not be allowed to get excessively intoxicated inside bars.

The city is responsible for keeping the streets clean. They passed the indoor smoking ban; it follows that there are going to be people standing around outside clubs and that more cigarette butts will have to be picked up. They should make a plan to cope with that. It cannot be the club manager's responsibilty to clean the street except for picking up litter directly in front of his store or around the back door and the club's dumpster (if they have one).

The noise problem can be solved with noise measuring devices: have someone from the bar (or the city) stand 50 feet (or whatever agreed distance)and measure the decibels. If they exceed the agreed upon number of decibels, the club turns it down. If it does not, the resident needs to insulate better, close his window (or get better windows). If the club is not violating the decibel level within the prescribed hours, it is not the club's problem.

They should take it to the homeowners who will need to discuss improving sound-proofing or replacing windows with new ones.

If you paid $500,000 for a one bedroom dig and you got thin walls and cheap windows, brutha, it ain't the club owners' monkey.

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