BOULDER, Colo. [Daily Camera]— Patrons at downtown Boulder’s only strip club will soon be able to buy a beer or a shot to go along with the view.
On Wednesday, members of the city’s Beverages Licensing Authority voted unanimously to give the Nitro Club a liquor license.
Which isn’t to say the vote was a ringing endorsement. Board members — who are limited by law in the criteria they can consider in deciding whether to grant a license — said their hands were tied by a neighborhood survey showing overwhelming support for the license.
“When are Boulder’s needs met? I just don’t understand this,” board member Lisa Spalding said, noting that no one from the neighborhood showed up to protest the license. “This community has a very serious problem, I think. We need the community to come forward and do something about this. But they’re not here.”
Vince Linden, the lawyer representing Nitro Club owner Michael Cobb, told the liquor board that its job on Wednesday was simple, but also difficult: Decide whether his business should get a liquor license, without taking into account the nature of the entertainment on display.
Local governments have strict criteria to consider when deciding whether to grant a license, including the “needs and desires” of the surrounding neighborhood and the applicant’s “good moral character.”
“Regardless of the residents’ opinions of this particular use, I need you to set that aside and apply due process,” Linden said.
It was Cobb’s second hearing before the liquor board. In November, the board delayed a decision about whether to grant Cobb a liquor license until members had more information about the impact the club’s opening would have on the police department’s ability to keep a lid on downtown drinkers.
On Wednesday, police came back with their answer.
Boulder Deputy Police Chief Dave Hayes said law enforcement didn’t have any reason to think giving the club — at 1124 Pearl St. — a liquor license would cause problems, especially since the club already lets members bring their own booze.
Police have even said they’d prefer to patrol neighborhoods with licensed bars, because a liquor license gives them the authority to inspect the club to make sure everything’s going smoothly.
“I don’t believe that this establishment opening is going to cause us to have to add any additional resources,” Hayes said.
Liquor board members also pondered Cobb’s “moral character,” as well as his history with liquor licenses in the state. In 2001, a municipal judge in Longmont yanked a liquor license for a club Cobb ran.
In her ruling, the judge wrote that Cobb had engaged in a “pattern of deception” and found that he’d broken a condition of the liquor code by changing the layout of the club, Bella’s, without first asking permission. The opinion also castigated Cobb for allowing topless dancing without advising neighbors that’s what he’d be doing.
Linden, Cobb’s lawyer, said the Longmont decision unfairly tarred his client, who had put up a DJ booth and other “mobile” furniture that shouldn’t have counted as modifying the club’s layout. Linden also said the entertainment portion of Cobb’s former business had been in a part of the establishment not covered by the liquor license.
The liquor license that Cobb received Wednesday might have made the difference between his business succeeding or going belly-up, because city zoning officials had classified his business as an “indoor amusement establishment.”
That designation meant he’d have to go through a “use review” before the Boulder Planning Board, a process that could have shut the business down.
Cobb was challenging that process in court, arguing that Planning Board members broke a 14-day deadline to overturn a Board of Zoning Adjustment decision last spring.
But with the liquor license, Cobb’s business automatically becomes a tavern for zoning purposes, and he said he was almost certain to drop his legal battle.
“I don’t have any problems with the city of Boulder now,” he said after the meeting.
