MISSION VIEJO : Teen Dance Club Plan Draws Concerns

A proposal to build a youth dance club has drawn opposition from city officials who are nervous about adults socializing with teen-agers.

Although a Planning Commission vote was delayed on Monday, commissioners received a report from Police Lt. Randy Blair who opposed granting a permit to Shout West, a nightclub catering to teen-agers in which no alcohol would be served.

Blair said he couldn’t support the concept of 16-year-old boys and girls socializing with 21-year-old adults in the proposed dance club, which would take over a former restaurant site on Marguerite Parkway near Avery Parkway.

“The question might be, ‘Would a typical father of a 16- or 17-year-old girl approve of his daughter fraternizing, or potentially fraternizing, with a male over the age of 21, alcohol or not?’ ” asked Blair in the report.

Although Blair said the club’s security plans were satisfactory, “we still do not like the concept of adults mixing with underage persons in a nightclub-type of setting. Our rationale is that children or teen-agers are segregated by age group in most every other social endeavor.”

Les Wilson, a co-partner in the dance club venture, said the 16- to 21-year-old age group commonly mixes in many other places in the city, many of them unsupervised.

“Try any bowling alley, mall or arcade,” he said. “There are too many other places in Mission Viejo that has this intermingling.

“I don’t believe people above the age of 21 are going to come into my establishment. We’re not targeted to that age group, and we don’t appeal to them.”

Shout West would sell only nonalcoholic mixed beverages, soda and sparkling waters. Most of the entertainment would be dance oriented with recorded music.

During the daytime hours, the club would be rented for weddings and group events.

Although the Planning Commission offered little comment during the meeting, members said afterward that there were several problems that need to be solved before the permit could be approved.

Concerns were expressed over:

* Operating hours that may be too late for teen-agers. Wilson would have the club open until 1 a.m. on weekends.

“If we have to close at 10 or 11 p.m., the kids will continue to hang out in parks and malls like they currently do,” Wilson said. “How late they stay out should be under the control of the parent.”

* Minors consuming alcohol and drugs in a retail parking lot in front of the proposed club.

Wilson said six security guards will be hired for peak operating hours who would regularly patrol the parking lot.

* The proposed 600-person capacity of the nightclub. Commissioner Sherri Butterfield said she has concerns over the club holding about 250 seats for 600 people. Wilson said the number of people allowed in the nightclub is “certainly negotiable.”

Butterfield said she generally supports the concept of a teen dance club.

“Frankly, the idea of giving teens a good place to go is a wonderful idea,” she said. “But we have a lot of problems to work out.”