Insomnia Cafe Owner Moves to End Feud With Neighbors : Nightlife: In an about-face, John Dunn says his coffeehouse is being converted to a private club.

The Insomnia Cafe, which annoyed its neighbors for more than three years with its late hours and noisy customers, is converting to a private, members-only coffeehouse as of today, owner John Dunn said in a surprise announcement Thursday.

The often-defiant Dunn did an about-face Thursday, expressing regret for the headaches that his clientele have caused nearby residents, and saying the members-only concept was intended to screen out the trouble-making element.

“I got really tired of the crowd that was there too,” Dunn said. “Things did have to change.”

As of today, only those with a membership card will be admitted to the coffeehouse, situated on Ventura Boulevard west of Woodman Avenue. Dunn said he has handed out about 2,000 of the slick-looking gold cards, imprinted with the cafe’s distinctive logo, to some of his regular customers.

Dunn said he has offered membership--the cards are free--mostly to professionals in their 20s and older, contrasted with the teen-agers who prompted many of the complaints that dogged the cafe for years.

The 36-year-old cafe owner, sounding more and more like the neighbors he once battled, said he hoped the changeover to a private club would put an end to youths loitering in the cafe’s rear parking lot and playing Hacky Sack in front of the coffeehouse.

“If they have no respect for themselves, how can they have respect for anybody else?” he sniffed.

As a members-only coffeehouse, the Insomnia Cafe may be one of a kind.

“We’ve never heard of anything like that before,” said Bryan Bence, advertising director of Cups, a national cafe-culture magazine based in San Francisco. There are, however, some coffeehouses in San Francisco that charge covers. Bence said he viewed the development merely as one coffeehouse owner’s attempt to deal with a particular dilemma, not the start of a nationwide trend.

Added Bence: “The tendency toward cafes being democratic environments is one that should be valued.”

The Insomnia Cafe, for its part, will not charge membership or cover fees and will continue to observe the city-mandated closing hours of 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Dunn said. The cafe began closing at those hours after July 20, when Dunn was found guilty of failing to obey the city-ordered closing times, according to Rick Schmidt, a deputy district attorney in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.

To cater to the more upscale crowd that he expects, Dunn said he is seriously considering changing from the current self-parking system to a valet-parking service.

Dunn’s new, conciliatory attitude came about after years of struggle and rebellion. After two public hearings, the Los Angeles City Council in November, 1993, ordered Dunn to scale back his hours. After Dunn refused to do so, the city took him to court last year in an effort to force him to comply. In court appearances in February and July of this year, a Van Nuys Municipal Court judge fined Dunn $3,200 for continuing to flout the council’s order, and gave him one year of probation and a suspended sentence of 10 days on a city graffiti-removal work crew.

Reaction to news of the members-only coffeehouse was muted, with neighbors expressing caution and even suspicion, and one customer saying he did not believe changes were necessary.

“If he’s sincere in all of this--and it sounds like he’s trying to work with the neighborhood and have a good establishment--that would be fine with us,” said Chuck Betz, co-chairman of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.’s Insomnia Cafe committee. “But it remains to be seen.”

But Gary Nudell said, “He has been forced to comply after years of the homeowners struggling to get the system to work. So, you know, his contrition and all, I’m suspicious.”

Riki Rachtman--the host of “Love Line,” an advice show on radio station KROQ and a longtime customer--said he thought it was “ridiculous” that the city has been trying to force Dunn to close early, adding he has never seen people acting in an unruly manner in the coffeehouse.