A San Bernardino strip cabaret ordered closed because of lewd conduct will reopen as a restaurant with topless dancers, the club’s attorney said Thursday.

The future of the Flesh Club, on the city’s family-oriented Hospitality Lane, has been in doubt since November 2007, when a judge ordered the business to cease all adult-oriented activities for eight months.

After the order expired, the club’s owners kept the business closed while they sought a liquor license.

The owners now have the license, attorney Roger Jon Diamond said.

City Attorney Jim Penman, who has battled the cabaret in court for more than a dozen years, said police will keep close tabs on the business.

He predicted that it will fail, since restrictions on the license require the Flesh Club to earn more money from food sales than alcohol.

The city has been trying since 1994 to keep the Flesh Club, then known as the Rocket Theater, from operating in its family-oriented restaurant row along Hospitality Lane.

In January 1995, city officials won a preliminary injunction requiring that dancers at the club remain clothed.

To obtain that order, city officials had to convince a county Superior Court judge that they had a right to enforce zoning rules prohibiting nude entertainment in a family-oriented business district.

City officials claimed the cabaret had flouted city zoning laws. They cited locations comprising more than 224 acres where the club could operate legally. The judge then issued an injunction prohibiting nudity at the club.

In 1999, a state appeals court found San Bernardino’s zoning regulation unconstitutional, in part because the city had overstated the number and size of alternative locations. A corrected count shows about 80 acres available where the club could operate.

Diamond called the discrepancy proof of a deliberate lie, but city officials said they simply made a mistake.

City police conducted undercover investigations in the club trying to determine whether sexual activity was occurring there.

The San Bernardino County district attorney declined to file charges, but during a civil trial several women who worked as dancers at the club said they often performed illegal sex acts on the club’s paying customers.