As City Director Brad Cazort walked into Midtown Billiards just after 2:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, he noticed a “Support Little Rock’s 5 a.m. Clubs” banner on the wall to his left.
He made a mental note to remember the website address — littlerock5am.com — and continued to squeeze his way through the crowded, small entryway toward the back of the club. The banner’s message was in fact why he was there that night — or morning rather — accompanied by At-large Director Gene Fortson and two vice squad officers.
The Little Rock Board of Directors has been flirting with the idea of limiting private club hours to 2 a.m. since last fall. Most bars and clubs in the city already have to stop selling alcohol by 2 a.m., but there are 13 establishments that have permits from the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division to serve alcohol until 5 a.m.
Those permits are no longer available, and just nine in the city are active. The division’s administrator, Michael Langley, has said the permits were created when the state had more factories with people working third shifts from 3-11 p.m., but that isn’t the case anymore.
As Cazort made his way through the mostly young crowd at Midtown, he did a rough head count. There were about 160 people, by his estimate, in a bar that has a set capacity of 99.
“That’s a huge public safety issue,” Cazort said after exiting the bar, climbing into the undercover officers’ vehicle that would take him and Fortson to the next stop on their list.
In recent weeks, both directors visited all nine active 5 a.m. clubs on a Wednesday night (that’s Thursday morning) and Saturday night (or Sunday morning) to see for themselves how much business the establishments had.
Five of the nine active clubs — Midtown, Electric Cowboy, Club Elevations, Discovery and Triniti — have rallied together in a group called the Arkansas Licensed Beverage Association to push back against earlier closing times. Among the group’s talking points is the assertion that many of the venues would have to lay off workers and possibly even shut down if they are forced to close at 2 a.m.
In addition to the five clubs that make up the Arkansas Licensed Beverage Association, the other clubs with active 5 a.m. permits are Salut, Paper Moon, Jazzi’s and the Fraternal Order of the Eagles. Jazzi’s, however, elects to close by 3 a.m. every day, and the Eagles club rarely stays open past midnight.
“Those businesses that are marginal right now are probably not going to make it if that were to happen,” said Phyllis Price, manager of the Electric Cowboy at 9515 Interstate 30. She added that limiting hours to 2 a.m. would make it so that all of the city’s bars are competing for the same money at the same time, whereas now the 5 a.m. clubs see an influx in business at 2 a.m. when people leave the bars that have closed and go there.
Since the Cowboy is corporate-owned, she said it wouldn’t be up to her whether layoffs happen but the club would “certainly strive to make it work” without drastic measures if hours are limited. She appreciated Cazort and Fortson’s recent trips to the 5 a.m. clubs because there seems to be a feeling among the Board of Directors, she said, that no one is out that late.
Late-night business
According to a review of the Cowboy’s sales figures from 2013, 30 percent of the club’s revenue that year came from the six hours it is open past 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, Price said.
The Arkansas Licensed Beverage Association sent out a 40-page packet of information to city directors and city staff members informing them of that figure and others. But Fortson said he and Cazort decided they needed to see for themselves.
“We had a conversation about the 10 people sitting up there on the city board, and not one of them will admit to having been to a club after 2 a.m. anytime recently. So none of us really know what we are talking about when it comes to this issue,” Fortson said. “All we know is what the lobbyist folks were telling us on one hand and what the police were saying on the other hand. So it was interesting to go out and really see for ourselves what is happening.”
Based on a four-month review, Elevations said it does 53.3 percent of its business after 2 a.m. Discovery and Triniti — which share an address and owner — realized 87 percent and 83 percent of their revenue after 2 a.m., respectively. Midtown was unable to break down its revenue by hour, but estimated that about 80 percent comes in after midnight.
When Cazort and Fortson dropped by the establishments midweek recently, they found that just Midtown and Paper Moon — a strip club — were open past 2 a.m. that day. The other private clubs were closed.
“One of the impressions I had from all of the contact from the owners and patrons was that this economic impact and engine they had going was all the time — every night,” Cazort said. “I wanted to look at what I considered to be a slack night and a busy night. That told me that only two clubs were open past 2 o’clock on Wednesday night and that this is not a huge economic engine during the week. It’s not constant.”
The early Sunday morning tour from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. proved much more busy. Cazort’s head count at Electric Cowboy estimated about 450 people, and Elevations security told the director that 488 people had been through that establishment’s door that morning. The directors said they were happy to see a number of cabdrivers camped out in most of the establishments’ parking lots to drive home intoxicated patrons.
All in all, Cazort estimated that he saw a total of 1,300 people between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. at the clubs he visited.
“That’s a lot of people, but it’s not the impression I was given before we went as to how busy it was.”
Public Safety
At Elevations, the club’s parking lot was packed at 3:30 a.m. and off-duty police officers hired by the club as security were stationed at the entrance and throughout the parking lot. The officers are part of a security team of 27, which makes up about half of the club’s 53 employees.
The club has agreements with businesses across Colonel Glenn Road to use the stores’ parking lots after-hours. On a busy Saturday night, more than two blocks of store parking lots across the street from the club were packed.
Clubgoers were hanging out there, in mostly unlit spaces. Some sat at picnic tables and ate food served from a grill. Directors saw others drinking from bottles and cans, though they were unable to determine what the beverages were from their seats in the vehicle they were riding by in.
“There seemed to be a lot of scurrying around and activity in all of the parking lots [at the 5 a.m. clubs] as much as there was inside, and I think that’s a public safety concern,” Fortson said. “I’d say I came away with some genuine public safety questions.”
Statistics provided by the vice officers show that anywhere from 49 percent to 82 percent of police calls to clubs that stay open until 5 a.m. occur between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.
At Triniti, formerly known as Backstreet, and Discovery — both located at 1021 Jessie Road — there were 92 police calls in 2013 and 72 percent were after 2 a.m. Of the 150 calls made to Electric Cowboy, 49 percent were during that time frame. At Elevations, 62 percent of 79 calls that year were after 2 a.m. Midtown had 56 calls, of which 82 percent were after 2 a.m. Paper Moon had 66 percent of its 74 calls occur in that time frame, and Salut had 55 percent of its 11 calls happen then.
Directors said it is telling that Jazzi’s, which elects to close by 3 a.m., had a lower percentage with 37 percent of its 35 calls occurring after 2 a.m.
But club owners say the majority of calls are for “small things” like lost car keys, vehicle theft or an altercation that is over before police arrive, not for guns or serious violence. Even if that were so, directors said the calls that require on-duty police officers to show up are taking away from that officer’s surveillance around town and lengthen response times to other emergencies.
Discovery and Triniti owner Norman Jones said if people didn’t feel safe at the establishments, they wouldn’t go to them. On the night the two directors visited Discovery, there were two arrests for drunk-and-disorderly conduct about 3:30 a.m.
Cazort counted roughly 240 people there at 4:30 a.m., but Jones said if they had arrived earlier they would have seen more people. The club’s capacity is 600.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand there is shift work and that the waiter who waits on you tonight, if he wants to go out and socialize or see some entertainment, he would have nowhere to go if everywhere closed at 2 a.m.,” Jones said. “If hours are shortened, it would affect me terribly. It would be devastating. There would definitely be layoffs … about 75 percent of my staff probably, if not having to shut down completely.”
Board of Director action
City Director Joan Adcock has introduced an ordinance before the board that would close all establishments at 2 a.m. Industry representatives worked with City Manager Bruce Moore to present a different ordinance that wouldn’t change the hours, but would require the clubs to keep the number of off-duty police officers they have now and give the police chief authority to require more if there are problems at a particular club.
“We feel that was a compromise,” said attorney Justin Allen, who represents the five clubs in the association. “We think that is more fitting and appropriate to address the public safety concerns [rather] than closing earlier.”
Cazort and Fortson plan to present the findings from their recent late-night tours to the board at the Aug. 12 agenda meeting that starts at 4 p.m. at City Hall. Fortson has spoken with officials in other cities that have recently limited club hours, such as Jacksonville and Jonesboro.
Jonesboro limited private club hours to 2:30 a.m. in 2007. The association of Little Rock 5 a.m. clubs used statistics from the Jonesboro Police Department in their packet distributed to the board to argue that limiting hours had no effect on crime. The figures the group presented show that the number of reports to the clubs rose every year after hours were limited.
“There has been no identifiable correlation between the ordinance and the number of police calls” in Jonesboro, the packet states.
But Jonesboro Police Chief Mike Yates takes issue with the report, calling it “very skewed and misleading.” He said the information given to the group was provided by a former intern who was a student “with little crime analysis experience.” He said the report also fails to consider population growth, the increase in the number of private clubs — nearly 50 percent since 2005 — and focuses solely on calls for service.
“In Jonesboro, closing at 2:30 a.m. had a huge impact on crime, and many of the calls for service were officer-generated by officers working off-duty at the club, not a call from the public,” Yates said.
Neither Cazort nor Fortson were ready to say whether they support Adcock’s recommendation to close the clubs at 2 a.m. or whether they will have a counterproposal to offer in August. They are still going over their research, they said.
But Fortson did have a general takeaway.
“What this trip confirmed to me is the need to make a change — the need to re-evaluate,” he said.