San Bernardino- San Bernardino City Council members on Monday rejected the Flesh Club’s application to emerge from a court-imposed closure by reopening as a topless bar.

Council members voted 6-0, with Esther Estrada absent due to illness, to deny the nude cabaret’s application for a “determination of Public Convenience or Necessity,” a finding that the club is legally required to secure before it can receive a liquor license.

Attorney Roger Jon Diamond [pictured], representing the club, said the council’s refusal “basically guarantees years of litigation.”

Diamond said city officials failed to provide the club 10 days’ notice, as required by law, before Monday’s hearing.

Ordinarily, state law restricts liquor licenses in San Bernardino County to two per census tract, whereas the tract that includes the Flesh Club’s Hospitality Lane location has a total of 27 licenses, according to a city staff report.

To grant a new license, city officials would have to determine that the club would meet a public need or serve a market.

In a letter, the club’s attorneys cite such a need, pointing out that there are no other nude bars in the area.

Senior Deputy City Attorney Henry Empeno said officials’ primary concern isn’t the nature of the proposed business. It was simply that the area already has too many licenses, Empeno said.

Diamond scoffed at that.

“Isn’t it a coincidence that the one (license application) that’s too many is the one that’s so controversial?” he said.

The Flesh Club has been closed since November, after a San Bernardino Superior Court judge ruled that sex and lewd conduct routinely occurred there in violation of the state’s Red Light Abatement law, which targets brothels.

That order expires July 14. But some restrictions remain in place, including a ban on dancers touching patrons.

In an interview earlier this month, Diamond said that by winning a liquor license, the cabaret’s owners would have a strong incentive to discourage the behaviors that led to the red-light abatement action.

He said topless bars go into the business recognizing that they face severe sanctions, including the possible loss of a valuable liquor license, if they let dancers touch or get too close to the patrons.