GPCA to hold emergency meeting on JP’s Tuesday 8/13

The Glover Park Citizens’ Association is holding a special meeting on Tuesday, August 13 at 7 p.m. to vote on whether to support two Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B resolutions regarding JP’s Lounge (2412 Wisconsin Ave.). The strip club reopened in June under new ownership, four years after its original building was destroyed by a fire. The meeting will be held at Stoddert Elementary School (4001 Calvert St.).

The resolutions—which the ANC passed in July—oppose the recent reactivation of JP’s liquor license and also the proposed use of tabletops and alcoves in the bar for semi-private dancing.

An Alcoholic Beverage Control Board hearing on the matter is scheduled for Wednesday, August 14 at 9:30 a.m.

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JP’s slated to open Friday, but without table dancing

JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) is scheduled to open for business on Friday, June 21, more than five years after the strip club’s original home was destroyed in a fire, says authorized spokesperson Paul Kadlick. But the club will feature dancers only on its two customary stages, not on its three new tabletop platforms or in its two new semi-private booths. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board ruled today that the club’s management needs to file a separate application for permission to use the smaller performance spaces—something Kadlick vows to do by Friday at the latest. Kadlick says there’s still a bit of minor paperwork to do at the D.C. Department of Health before the club can open, but he anticipates taking care of that tomorrow.

Kadlick calls today’s ruling a “substantial victory” for the club, which has faced repeated attempts by Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B to block its reopening. But the ANC can claim a victory in today’s ruling, too. ANC members have raised concerns that the tabletop and booth platforms could encourage illegal physical contact between dancers and club clientele. Earlier, the ABC Board twice rebuffed the ANC’s pleas that the Board study the propriety of the smaller performance spaces before allowing their use. But now the Board has decided to do just that.

Placards to be posted soon at the club will list a deadline for community members to file formal objections to the tabletop spaces or to the liquor license’s reactivation. The ABC Board will consider any valid protests at a hearing later in the summer.

UPDATE: Mark Segraves of NBC4 tweets that the final paperwork has been accomplished and that the club will open at 5 pm on Friday.

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Liquor board changes mind; schedules JP’s hearing for Weds 6/19

After repeatedly ruling that JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) could reopen without community comment, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board last week decided to investigate the strip club’s new interior configuration before opening its doors to the public.

Since January 2008, when a fire destroyed the original JP’s building, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B has asked the ABC Board several times to consider revoking the club’s liquor license. The ANC has raised questions about the club’s changing ownership, the club’s appropriateness to an increasingly kid-centric neighborhood, and, most recently, its plans to add semi-private performance spaces to the rebuilt club’s interior. The ANC argued that these spaces would increase the likelihood of illegal hanky-panky between performers and patrons and that it constituted a substantial change from the old club’s operations. By law, any substantial change must be approved by the liquor board.

On June 5, the board denied ANC Commissioner Jackie Blumenthal’s written request to investigate the semi-private spaces as a substantial change. But on June 12, after the JP’s ownership applied to reactivate the club’s dormant license, the board decided to hold a hearing on the matter after all. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration spokesman Bill Hager did not respond to emailed requests for comment, but a knowledgeable source outside the agency says that the hearing is likely to involve testimony only from an ABRA investigator. If the liquor board determines that the new interior layout of JP’s constitutes a substantial change, it must then decide whether the change is acceptable, which might involve a second hearing with community input. If the board sees no substantial change to the bar’s operations, it would likely reactivate the liquor license, allowing the club to reopen.

The fact-finding hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 19.

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JP’s layout could “change the nature of nude dancing” in DC, WaPo says

The imminent reopening of JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) could herald a citywide increase in strip-club sleaze, reports the Washington Post. Plans for the club, recently rebuilt after a 2008 fire, include dance platforms in “private alcoves” that might invite incursions into the required three-foot distance between entertainers and patrons, critics say. “Washington has one of the cleanest strip club attitudes in the whole nation,” said a source identified by the Post as a “dismayed competitor.” “This is going to change the whole city. If they allow this to open, I assure you other clubs will follow suit. You don’t want Washington to become like Las Vegas.”

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JP’s opening slides to June

From the May 2013 edition of the Glover Park Gazette:

Construction delays have pushed the reopening of JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) into June, says managing partner Phil Mathew. “Things happen, minor things, like the lead time for a light fixture could be a little longer than expected,” Mathew says. “I’m not settling for mediocrity when it comes to our build-out. I want it to look exactly like the architect’s rendering.”

The decades-old strip club is being rebuilt after a January, 2008 fire destroyed its original building. The new interior will look like “more of a high-end lounge than a gentleman’s club,” Mathew says. “It’s well-lit, it’s not anything seedy.” The space will feature black walls with TVs in light oak frames, with a dark custom-made wood bar, he adds. The club’s staff will total about 30 people, including dancers, servers, and security personnel.

The club’s liquor license is currently in a dormant status called “safekeeping”; it must be reactivated before the club can operate. Once that happens, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B and near neighbors will be allowed to lodge formal protests of the license with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, as they are certain to do.

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Liquor board denies ANC request for JP’s hearing

From the May 2013 edition of the Glover Park Gazette:

With JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) set to reopen this month,
ANC 3B asked the liquor board to allow a formal protest of its license,
on the grounds that the club’s floor plan constituted a substantial
change to the strip club’s operation, compared to its operation before
it was shuttered by a January 2008 fire. On April 17, the board decided
not to allow a separate protest period triggered by the floor plan. The
club is already due to face a protest period as soon as its license—now
in a dormant state called “safekeeping”—is reactivated. “Substantial
change will be determined by the board once the license comes out of
safekeeping,” the board ruled.

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JP’s strip club to reopen in May

From the April 2013 edition of the Glover Park Gazette:

JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.) will reopen sometime in May, according to managing partner Philip Mathew. “We have not planned for an open house, but welcome all our neighbors to attend our grand opening once a specific date is finalized and posted,” Mathew says. The strip club will open at 4 p.m. daily, with live entertainment starting at 5 p.m., he adds.

The club’s liquor license has been in a dormant status called “safekeeping” since its original building was destroyed in a January 2008 fire. As soon as the license is reactivated so the bar can open, the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration will allow neighbors to challenge its suitability to operate through a formal hearing process. Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B, which has sought to end the club’s license in the past, is expected to make a formal protest.

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JP’s building permit approved

JP’s strip club is one step closer to reopening. Yesterday, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs issued a permit to construct walls and stages inside 2412 Wisconsin Ave. The building shell is a replacement for the club’s original home, which was destroyed in a January 2008 fire.

According to notes on the building permit, the new interior will include two performance stages; three tabletop platforms upon which dancers may also perform; and two “cubicle-style” booths, each of which will accommodate one or two “VIP customers” plus a dancer on the table. “There is under no circumstances to be ANY lap dances, touching of customers, or the allowing of customers to touch you,” the building permit notes specify. “You are expressly prohibited from ‘MASSAGING’ a customer, and are expressly prohibited from ‘SITTING ON A CUSTOMER’S LAP.'”

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Liquor board transfers JP’s license to Daniel and Mathew

On October 3, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board OK’d a controversial license transfer, approving the application of Jason K. Daniel and Philip M. Mathew to take over the liquor license for JP’s Night Club (2412 Wisconsin Ave.), an ABRA spokesman tells us. Last month, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3B had requested that the ABC Board make no transfer until they held a public hearing to assess the fitness of the two young men to revive the strip club, which has been closed since a January 2008 fire. No such hearing was held, but the board has already committed to scheduling a public protest hearing before after allowing the new owners to begin operating the club. Building permit applications to construct interior walls, bars, and stages are pending.

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ANC wants liquor board hearing on new JP’s owners

At the September 13 meeting of ANC 3B, commissioners unanimously resolved to request a formal Alcoholic Beverage Control Board hearing into the ownership of JP’s Night Club. The strip club, which has been closed since a January 2008 fire at its 2412 Wisconsin Ave. home, is in the process of reopening under new management, but the identity of the reopeners keeps changing.

“ANC3B is seeking a more open process at this point due to a series of actions, representations, and misrepresentations that have occurred in recent months pertaining to the ownership of JP’s,” the resolution states. Referring to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board’s rapid approval of one new owner—Brian Petruska—last year and a series of  putative new owners who have presented themselves since then, the resolution states that “the actions of ABRA initially and the contual restructuring of owners and partners” in the club’s holding company, Wisconsin Ventures LLC, “do not give us confidence that when JP’s reopens it will be managed well enough to protect the community from the secondary impacts associated with nude dancing establishments.”  ABRA has already promised to hold a protest hearing before the JP’s license is reactivated. The hearing requested by the ANC would occur prior to that.

An August 13 application to transfer the JP’s license to two new owners of Wisconsin Ventures—Jason Daniel and Philip Mathew—is “still pending the submission of additional documentation,” says ABRA spokesman Bill Hager. The ANC’s request for an ownership hearing “will go before the ABC Board for their review and consideration,” Hager added.

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