ANAHEIM : City Loses Effort to Close Down Bar

A Westside beer-and-wine bar that features bikini-clad dancers won a court battle to remain open Thursday when an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that the city failed to prove that the bar is a public nuisance.

Judge James J. Alfano ruled that the city cannot revoke the operating permit for The Barbary Coast Cabaret on Aug. 6 as planned, and ordered it to pay the bar’s attorney fees.

“This is not a surprise to me,” said Jeffrey L. Farano, the bar’s attorney. “It was clear from the beginning that the city did not have enough evidence to revoke the (operating) permits.”

Deputy City Atty. Malcolm Slaughter said Thursday that he had not seen the ruling and would not comment. He did not rule out the possibility that the city would appeal the decision, however.

Carl and Franceska Honigmann, who have owned the 31-year-old bar since 1985, were unavailable for comment Thursday. The bar, which features women in bikinis dancing on a small stage, is in a small, run-down shopping center just off Brookhurst Street in an area where there are several similar establishments.

In his ruling, Alfano cited a recent state appellate court decision that barred the city of Costa Mesa from closing Henry N’ Harry’s Goat Hill Tavern. In that decision, a panel of judges ruled that the Goat Hill’s owners have a “vested property right” to operate the bar, and its licenses could not be revoked without proving it to be a public nuisance.

The Barbary Coast’s legal problems began last fall when the Honigmanns applied to the city for permission to expand into a vacant store next door. Not only did the city Planning Commission reject that effort, it ordered the bar’s existing permits revoked.

The Honigmanns appealed the decision to the City Council, which ruled that the bar could stay open until August, at which time its status would be reviewed. The city attorney’s office interpreted that to mean that the license was to be revoked, and that the Honigmanns would have to apply for a new license if they wanted the bar to stay open. To deny a new license, the city only has to show that the establishment might be a nuisance, attorneys have said.

At the council hearing, Sgt. Harold Mittman, head of the Anaheim Police Department vice squad, testified that officers had been called to the Barbary Coast nine times in the past two years for crimes ranging from armed robbery to public intoxication, but said that the bar was no worse than neighboring establishments.