Despite objections from local business owners and residents during a public comment period, the White Plains Common Council passed a moratorium on cabarets at its July 7 meeting.
According to Damon Amadio, the White Plains building commissioner, the moratorium will give the city time to codify regulations that were typically written into each cabaret”™s operating permit. Amadio said that once the cabaret law is updated, rules that previously were written into each license will be uniformly applied through the city ordinance.
“We”™ve had quite a few applications for new cabarets,” Amadio said in a phone interview. “We decided we should take a breather, update the ordinance and apply it to the new cabarets. Everyone who is in good standing will be allowed to operate their cabarets under the moratorium.”
During the public hearing regarding the licensing moratorium, local cabaret owner Daniel Coughlan said he feared new regulations that may follow the moratorium would hurt small-business owners.
“I operate my cabaret without any harm whatsoever to the safety and welfare of the public while providing a significant benefit to the economy and quality of life in White Plains,” said Coughlan, owner of Coughlan Inc., which has operated a cabaret doing business as Coughlan”™s, Prophecy and Coliseum for the past 10 years. “I”™m strongly in favor of reviewing laws to ensure the public”™s safety and welfare are adequately protected. However, here the laws likely sought to be enacted will only strangle small-business owners such as myself who have poured their life savings into our businesses.”
Coughlan”™s landlord, Bart Goldberg, questioned why cabarets had suddenly become a zoning issue.
“Why single out cabarets?” Goldberg asked rhetorically. “As best as I can understand from what I read, it”™s because someone is characterizing the existence of cabarets as they are presently recognized in the city zoning as being detrimental to the safety and the welfare of the public.”
Goldberg told the council that in the close to 40 years cabarets have operated in the building he owns at the corner of South Broadway and Martine Avenue, there have been few, if any, safety violations.
“In all honesty, I believe the problem is, we”™re looking to go back to a halcyon time where there weren”™t late nights, there weren”™t parties, there wasn”™t drinking,” said local attorney Gary Jenkins. “They tried this in 1929, and it failed miserably. ”¦ Let”™s just use the law we have in place to protect the people that want to do business.”
Mayor Thomas Roach repeatedly said during the session the law would halt licensing of any new cabarets while the city reviewed and updated the regulations regarding the establishments.
“I think that any time you take an action of this sort, it”™s a slippery slope,” Jenkins said in a phone interview. “I just don”™t like the idea of trying to limit free enterprise. What”™s the endgame of not allowing establishments to have cabaret licenses?”
Seven people addressed the council during the hearing, all opposed to the moratorium.
Council President John Martin noted the local law “specifically says that during the effective period of this moratorium, nothing shall prohibit the submission or processing of (renewal) applications for cabarets.”
Martin said the city”™s cabaret law is outdated and needs review. He said he had no intention of voting to prohibit cabarets.
Under the White Plains municipal code, a cabaret is a “place of public resort, accommodation, assemblage, entertainment or amusement, where refreshments of any kind are served for gain or profit, and where dancing, entertainments or exhibitions are given or permitted in connection therewith, or a place of public resort, accommodation, assemblage, entertainment or amusement where exhibitions or other forms of entertainment or amusement are given or conducted for gain or profit and dancing and serving of refreshments of any kind are permitted.”
The measure passed by a 6-1 vote, with Councilwoman Nadine Hunt-Robinson opposed.
“I think it ill-advised to issue a moratorium with respect to cabarets,” Hunt-Robinson said, noting she would like to see specific data rather than anecdotal concerns. “I think some of our businesses in our core are in a tenuous situation. While I recognize careful drafting was attempted ”¦ I think the wiser course of action is not to issue the moratorium but rather to review the laws.”
Roach said updating the cabaret law could help bring business to White Plains.
“The other side to this is that there are certain establishments that most would welcome in our city that cannot locate here right now due to the way our cabaret law is drafted,” he said. “That”™s what we want to look at and see if we can improve that circumstance.”
