COVER STORY : Getting In Their Licks : West Hollywood: House of Blues strikes a sour note with some neighbors who say traffic, parking problems and noise have increased since the nightclub opened.

ONE NIGHT LAST SPRING, SAMANTHA ALLEN realized that the newly opened House of Blues might not live up to its motto: “Help Ever, Hurt Never.” At least not as far as her West Hollywood neighborhood was concerned.

Allen, who lives a block or so south of the nightclub and restaurant, heard a couple fighting outside her apartment. She and some other residents ventured outside and discovered that a House of Blues patron had apparently beaten his girlfriend and then sped away in a car.

“My neighbor and I looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, great. If this is the shape of things to come, we’re in for a bumpy ride,’ ” said Allen.

In fact, things have been pretty bumpy for almost everyone along the eastern end of the famed Sunset Strip, where House of Blues overcame months of intense community opposition to open in May.

The club is already a phenomenal success, at least in the fickle entertainment industry. Its founder, Los Angeles businessman Isaac Tigrett, envisioned the $9-million entertainment complex as a tribute to blues and the rural “juke joints” where the music flourished. Celebrities--including Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi--were among the early investors. Tens of thousands of tourists and locals have come to munch on jambalaya, listen to live music from artists such as Aerosmith and Sheryl Crow, and buy T-shirts and souvenirs in the complex’s Take It Easy Baby gift shop.

This year, House of Blues will rack up an estimated $12 million in sales of meals, drinks and merchandise alone (the company declined to release information on concert revenue).

The club’s good fortune has spread to the city’s coffers. West Hollywood officials note that the club has helped boost hotel occupancy rates and is already the third- or fourth-largest generator of sales-tax revenue in the cash-strapped city.

Yet the club has many of its neighbors wailing.

Residents have presented West Hollywood officials with a long list of problems they say House of Blues has caused, from traffic gridlock to rowdy patrons to increased crime. In response, the city listed the area around the club as one of eight hot spots requiring stepped-up police patrols.

Capt. Bill Mangan of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department station said that deputies have mainly been helping out with traffic and crowd control. He also said that the club’s presence has not significantly altered crime rates in the area.

At least one neighboring business--Butterfield’s Restaurant--has claimed that parking problems caused by House of Blues have ruined business. The restaurant has been struggling to reach a legal settlement with the club. Hollywood Hills residents have discussed filing a class-action lawsuit against the club and the city of West Hollywood. Recently, a group of disabled activists targeted the club for alleged violations of handicapped-access laws.

House of Blues publicists did not respond to repeated requests to interview Tigrett, the founder, for this story.

But club General Manager Steve Strauss says House of Blues has already made progress on some issues and is working on others with city officials and residents. The club has contracted with local garages for extra parking and hired a private security detail to control crowds. But officials acknowledge that such steps have not silenced criticism of the club and the city.

“I think some people would have preferred we put a toxic dump (on the House of Blues site) instead,” said West Hollywood City Councilman Steve Martin.

House of Blues is not the only nightclub to raise the hackles of local residents, whose houses and apartment buildings have always coexisted uneasily with Sunset Boulevard businesses. But it has aroused a level of antipathy unrivaled in recent memory, according to residents and city officials.

For some critics, House of Blues has become a metaphor for careless development along the Sunset Strip, for decades a symbol of Southern California’s free-wheeling night life and rock-music scene.

The debate could be far-reaching. The city of West Hollywood is floating a proposal--the Sunset Specific Plan--that seeks to promote and guide further development of up to 1 million additional square feet of retail and office space on the 1.2-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard between Havenhurst Drive and the Beverly Hills border. If passed, the plan would provide various incentives to new businesses on the Strip, including tax rebates and concessions on usually strict parking rules.

Officials hope the plan will help the 10-year-old city get the most from the Sunset Strip gold mine it inherited on incorporation in 1984. But some residents fear the plan will lead to disastrous overdevelopment--and their experience with House of Blues gives them little cause for hope, they say.

“It’s destroying our neighborhood,” West Hollywood activist Candida McCollam said of House of Blues. McCollam has organized a protest group against a city proposal to build a parking structure on Kings Road, which she contends is being considered mainly for the club’s benefit.

“We’re not anti-development,” said McCollam, who criticized West Hollywood for approving House of Blues without a full environmental review two years ago. “But there has to be some kind of adherence to rational planning. Things have gotten so out of hand in West Hollywood.”

Tigrett, the founder of House of Blues clubs in New Orleans and Cambridge, Mass., as well as the West Hollywood site, has a history of controversial projects.

Until now, he has been best-known for co-founding, with partner Peter Morton, the Hard Rock Cafe chain of restaurants. The popular eateries, which serve up diner fare alongside rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, grew out of a London restaurant the two opened in 1971.

In 1988, following a bitter lawsuit that divided the Hard Rock empire into two parts, Tigrett sold his stake in the company for $32 million. He then joined his father, entrepreneur John Tigrett, and developer Sid Shlenker in an ambitious project to build a 20,000-seat, $65-million pyramid-shaped sports and concert arena for the Tigretts’ hometown of Memphis, Tenn.

As recently as two years ago, city documents show, the younger Tigrett boasted to West Hollywood officials about the Memphis pyramid while seeking approval for House of Blues. What local officials might not have known, however, was that the construction and financing of the pyramid was considered a fiasco by Memphis leaders and many residents.

Many of the pyramid’s promised attractions--including a Hard Rock outlet--never materialized, and by the time the arena opened in late 1991, management companies run by Shlenker and the Tigretts were $16 million in debt and had filed for bankruptcy protection, according to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. The mayors of Memphis and Shelby County angrily terminated their contracts with the troubled companies.

House of Blues looks destined for a happier fate. The 27,000-square-foot club has already become a familiar landmark, perched on a key piece of hillside real estate overlooking the Los Angeles Basin.

The first thing most passersby notice is the corrugated tin siding, which Tigrett imported from Mississippi to give the exterior the look of a weather-worn blues joint.

The interior is considerably more upscale. A visitor can browse through the gift shop, dine in the 385-seat restaurant or hear a band in the music hall. Folk paintings and plaster-cast sculptures of famous blues artists decorate the bar areas and ceilings; the hardwood floors are buffed to a brilliant sheen.

Most patrons will never see the piece de resistance , though: the swank Foundation Room on the third floor. This is a private club for sponsors of a blues-education project that teaches local schoolchildren about popular music. Its guests can sup in a stunning, cherry-paneled banquet hall and then repair, through a hidden door, to the Buddha Room, a ritzy parlor with Oriental rugs, plush velvet sofas and Eastern sculpture.

The traces of Indian mysticism throughout the club reveal Tigrett’s own spiritual bent. Raised a Southern Baptist, he converted to Hinduism and has for years followed an Indian guru named Sai Baba. The swami gave the Hard Rock its motto (“Love All, Serve All”), which is echoed in the House of Blues’ “Help Ever, Hurt Never.”

But Sai Baba’s blessings have apparently not spared the club an early run of bad luck. A broken water main one night last summer sent 40,000 gallons of water cascading into the three-story structure. In September, sheriff’s deputies used pepper spray on rock star Tommy Lee during a 75-person brawl that spilled outside the club. Even before the club opened, two of its celebrity investors--John Candy and River Phoenix--had died.

Neighbors complain mainly of traffic gridlock, noise and parking problems, especially when a big-name act plays at the club. Stretch limousines block driveways. Drunken patrons have been known to relieve themselves on lawns and in driveways along Olive Drive. One night, deputies cited a driver who had parked a van along the red curb outside the club. Inside the van deputies found drug paraphernalia and a half-dozen young people, who said they had driven all the way from Idaho to visit House of Blues.

The club says it is working hard to solve the problems. Strauss, club general manager, said last week that he is moving toward satisfying the last of 128 conditions for a permanent certificate of occupancy, replacing the temporary one that the club has operated under since it opened. He also said that he has agreed to a city request to enclose an outdoor deck that had drawn complaints about noise.

“I can’t tell you how many dollars we’ve spent to ensure we take care of the city, the neighborhood and our guests,” Strauss said.

But many residents remain skeptical. The temporary certificate in particular has been a sore point for community activists, who have argued that it allowed the club to flout codes regulating parking, maximum occupancy, disabled access and other issues. Some have even attacked the tin siding as “outhouse architecture.”

“At the time the (House of Blues) plan was being considered, there should have been additional conditions imposed on the project,” said West Hollywood City Manager Paul Brotzman. “The traffic access and parking situation initially were a real disaster. It’s much better today (than three or four months ago) but still not fully resolved.”

The club, if only because of its high profile, will probably remain controversial for some time. Many residents fear that in the coming years, the success of House of Blues may come at the community’s expense.

Bettie Wagner, president of the Marmont Lane Assn., has lived in the Hollywood Hills since 1956. She says that development along the Strip, including House of Blues, is hurting the area.

“Look, the world changes. I know that,” she said. “But you hate to see an internationally known Strip become trashy. . . . Sunset Boulevard is starting to go downhill like Hollywood Boulevard did 20 years ago.”

Times staff writer Steve Hochman and researchers Joan Wolff and Janet Lundblad contributed to this story.