Regulations Put N.Y. Nightlife on the Line

New York City nightclub and bar owners -- convinced Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is out to get them -- are fighting a plan that they see as an attempt to shut down “the city that never sleeps” at a decent hour.

First, the mayor snuffed out smoking in offices and indoor public places throughout the city. Now he is proposing revoking a 1926 law that bans dancing in clubs and bars without a special cabaret license.

The owners believe Bloomberg wants to enact a substitute nightlife regulation, now being drafted, that could force them to close at 1 a.m. instead of the current 4 a.m. Bloomberg, they say, is trying to turn the city into the suburbs.

“The smoking ban is just a walk in the park compared to this monster,” Harold Kramer, owner of the Raven, a bar in Manhattan, said Tuesday. “We in the industry just think it is just an excuse to shut down bars and clubs. They tout it as the end of the dancing police. We look at that as a Trojan horse.”

Under current regulations, any establishment that permits dancing must receive a cabaret license. And larger clubs are required to be situated in nonresidential neighborhoods. The New York Nightlife Assn., an organization of bars, clubs and lounges, estimated there are currently about 300 license holders.

The plan being drafted by the Bloomberg administration would eliminate the cabaret license. But it would require bars, clubs and restaurants that stay open past 1 a.m., have a capacity of more than 75 people and play continuous music louder than 90 decibels to obtain a new nightlife license with strict provisions. Acoustical inspections would be required.

Owners argue that the new rules would make it easier for their licenses to be revoked -- not only for noise violations, but for such infractions as fistfights and overcapacity. The nightlife association estimated that the new rules would affect at least 1,000 additional establishments.

The Department of Consumer Affairs, which is preparing the regulations, has said that poorly managed clubs and bars cause quality-of-life disturbances in neighborhoods; in one week last August, there were 1,972 noise complaints.

Club and bar owners counter that the mayor’s smoking ban is the cause of many of the complaints, because customers are forced to stand on the street when they smoke.

They charge that Bloomberg is catering to owners of expensive cooperative apartments in neighborhoods where some bars are located.

“There has been a growing suburbanization of New York City, especially Manhattan,” said Bob Zuckerman, executive director of the New York Nightlife Assn. “There are people who want to have the amenities that the city has to offer. The nightlife that New York has been so accustomed to in terms of its late hours may not be such an amenity to a lot of those [apartment owners].”

The fight comes amid criticism that Bloomberg attended a party of Wall Street moguls at the St. Regis Hotel last month, where many guests reportedly puffed on cigars in violation of the smoking ban.

“There seems to be coming from the mayor a double standard. It is OK for certain groups of people to smoke at the St. Regis Hotel, and yet the average Joe and Jane can’t?” Zuckerman said.

Bloomberg, who said the city health department is investigating what occurred at the exclusive Kappa Beta Phi society event, told reporters that he arrived late and didn’t see anyone smoking.