ORANGE : City Yanks Use Permit for Club Remixx Site

The party is over for patrons of a nightclub for teen-agers, and city officials have made sure it stays that way.

Club Remixx, which became known as The Tunnel, closed its doors Sept. 15 under pressure from city officials. Police were investigating alleged violations of its use permit, including reports of underage alcohol and drug use, fights and other disturbances in the parking lot.

While club operators Richard Fite and Jason Brooks closed the club voluntarily, City Council members followed up Tuesday night by revoking the club’s use permit, which is assigned to the property and not the business.

“We don’t want to give anyone an opportunity to implement something like this again,” said Mayor Joanne Coontz after the 5-0 council vote to yank the permit.

The original holders of the permit for the club on North Eckhoff Street had applied in 1992 to open a nondrinking, nonsmoking Christian nightclub called the Flip Side, city officials said. But the applicants never followed through, and Fite and Brooks of Club Remixx Productions opened on the site in September, 1994.

The original permit application included letters of support from community churches, Assistant City Atty. David De Berry said. “What appeared to be a facility for minors degenerated into an underground nightclub,” he said.

Among the problems cited that made the club a “public nuisance” were drunk and disorderly conduct, aggravated assault, sexual assault and narcotics and weapons possession, a staff report said.

Club operator Fite said earlier that the report was exaggerated and that he thinks club patrons were being harassed. “It was nothing for us to have five or six cop cars swarming around on a weekend night,” he said. “The city is scared of nightclubs, period.”

He did say that one patron was stabbed and another badly beaten in August at the club.

Fite, 24, said that he and Brooks, also 24, have exhausted their financial resources and could not afford a court fight to challenge the city over the permit.