When a bar becomes a nuisance
Posted on April 21st, 2008 – 6:07 PMBy James Shiffer
The good times are coming to an end at Johnny A’s. Johnny Alexander’s gritty bar in the scrap metal district north of downtown Minneapolis got its liquor license yanked by the City Council, Star Tribune staff writer Steve Brandt reported Friday (read down for relevant paragraphs).
The 94-page report on the troubles with Johnny A’s ends with a “Notice of Nuisance” from Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Diane M. Krenz that summarizes the main evidence: no fewer than 419 visits by police to 200 West Broadway between February 2007 and February 2008, none of them for the purposes of knocking back a cold one. The parking lot, it seems, was a regular bazaar: drugs, bootleg DVDs, sex, all were on sale - much of it offered to undercover cops. Inside, the authorities once raided a Texas Hold’em tournament with a $1,000 cash prize. A patron was once seen going inside after tucking a handgun in his waistband. In November, police found someone hiding in a car in the parking lot. Under a seat was a two-foot sword. The next day, someone was shot outside the bar’s door. In February, an undercover officer bought drugs from a bar employee.
Not only that, but an inspection in December found “critical health violations” in the kitchen - they couldn’t get the dishwasher to start, among other problems, and owner Johnny Alexander’s explanation that he was leasing the kitchen to Billy just didn’t pass muster with the health inspector.
A bar where patrons feel the need to pack swords and guns certainly meets most people’s definition of a nuisance. But this part of Minneapolis isn’t much of a neighborhood, either. It’s a place old cars come to get ripped apart and rusting heaps of twisted steel loom over corrugated fences. One North Side business owner spoke up in favor of saving Johnny A’s: the city report includes a letter from Dean Rose, owner of the Bean Scene coffee shop on West Broadway. Rose described Alexander as someone trying to fight crime, not give it a home, and credited him with “remodeling a once shabby, run-down business into a clean, refreshing establishment with a comfortable atmosphere to drink and dine on the north side.”
Cities have wrangled with troublesome saloons since time immemorial, making me wonder if there’s a permanent cast of questionable characters in every city who, upon being evicted from one dive bar, will merely find another to inhabit. And Minneapolis, once home to the Upper Midwest’s most infamous Skid Row, probably won’t ever be free of such places.
UPDATE: This afternoon I had a conversation with Matt Alexander, son of Johnny A.’s owner who also worked in the bar. He takes issue with many aspects of the city’s report. The troubles were almost all associated with what happened in the parking lot, not inside the bar, he said, and his father was constantly working with police, not against them. But he couldn’t be responsible for the characters he threw off his property who inevitably wandered back, his son said. Many of the 419 police visits had to do with traffic violations in front of the club, Alexander said. He suspects the city wants the property for redevelopment, and this was the easiest way to get it. Matt Alexander said he’s disappointed that something his father invested so much work and money into was now wasted. “It’s a shame,” he said.
22 Responses to “When a bar becomes a nuisance”
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April 22nd, 2008 at 10:36 am
I wonder what the total cost was to the City of Minneapolis for getting this liquor license pulled. Undercover officers, City Council hearings/meetings, City staff time, etc., and will any of this cost be recovered from the Johnny’ A’s? Doubt it.
A liquor license should be viewed as a privilege, not a right, and as such the burden for having one revoked should be much smaller than what was needed in the case of Johnny A’s.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
I have stopped by Johnny A’s several times for lunch when I have had business in that area. A clean, orderly place with pretty decent bar food and friendly service. I never once saw anything untoward. If things were happening in his parking lot, what was Alexander to do other than call the police? Clean up the crime himself as an amateur police officer? It seems in this case calling the police likely contributed to the loss of his liquor license.
It sounds like the City Council wants to dissuade business owners that try to help clean up the community. The lesson seems to be to just shut up and ignore crime, lest your business be declared a “nuisance”.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Sounds like a cool place. What time is happy hour?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 am
A person who buys a bar in a tough part of town is taking on an asset with the expectation of a return on their investment, a return which is guaranteed to disappear with a revoked liquor license.
Typically, the city, seeing a problem, will require the owner to take mitigation action, such as with the recent brew-ha-ha over Gabby’s. This mitigation is undertaken at the bar owner’s expense.
When they do what is reasonable, under long established guidelines, to keep their business safe for employees and patrons, I think the bar owners can only be held accountable for so much.
Did the police arrest the drug dealer/prostitutes/pimps etc etc? Then they weren’t there anymore, right, but some other law-breakers moved in and took their places?
Why should the law abiding owner, who is acting in good faith to maintain a safe environment, bear extraordinary loss of property due to the illegal actions of others?
Isn’t he really making the job of the police easier, if law-breakers are converging on his establishement? Doesn’t it save the police the trouble of going out and finding these criminals?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
This is a great thing for North Minneapolis. Johnny A’s is nothing but problems. I have a female friend that used to have to drive past there on her way home from work at night, I always told her “Keep your doors locked and don’t stop within 5 blocks of that place for any reason!” I am very glad that it is gone, hopefully the people that patronized Johnny A’s will not all be at one bar downtown.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Tood bad, during the day the place was okay, and they had a great tenderloin sammich
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Sara, the privilege of having a liquor license is accompanied by an exorbitant fee paid to the city for said privilege and the city shouldn’t have the right to whimsikily decide which bars they want operating in their city this year without proving in great detail why they are in fact a nuisance. I realize that in your black and white world the city would always operate in our best interests and would have no hidden agendas and should be allowed to do whatever they like without proving their case. Unfortunately that world doesn’t exist and it would be highly unforunate if revoking a license were as simple as a few council members deciding they didn’t like that bar anymore and it should go away. If you’ve ever been on West Broadway by Johnny A’s you might realize that the problem might not be the bar itself but the area it’s surrounded by. But I would hate to complicate your simple solutions.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
They should have left it alone. No one lives around there and it is away from downtown. Downtown was safe when there was still the red light on Washington Avenue.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Gabby’s, a bar in Northeast which was also at risk of losing its city license, got a reprieve in February. Story is at http://www.startribune.com/local/16004192.html
Having visited the bar earlier this year, I can attest to the security, which involved two muscled bouncers, frisking, a metal detector wand and swiping of my driver’s license through a reader. It’s the tightest checkpoint I’ve seen outside of airports and nuclear power plants.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I always wondered where Moby Dick’s “clientele” went to. With the bar there, at least one knows where they are.