W. Hollywood Focuses on Problems Clubs Cause

WEST HOLLYWOOD — The nightclubs lining West Hollywood’s boulevards draw so many revelers that the city’s population doubles on weekends, attracting controversial proposals to regulate the crowds.

The nightclub proposals have incensed some longtime club owners who run some of the best-known entertainment spots in the nation, but social-minded civic leaders say their time has come.

Drafted after six months of hearings in which residents outlined club-related complaints, the proposals, among other things, would require nightclub owners to provide valet parking, to post signs establishing “quiet zones” in areas around the clubs, to move entrance and exit doors away from nearby homes and to keep sound from the club’s interior from leaking outside.

Residents say the problems of noise, trash and parking generated by the densely populated city’s 21 entertainment clubs are years old, but the city’s incorporation two years ago gave them a new outlet for their complaints.

Lack of Control Cited

“(The clubs) never had any agency come down on them before,” said one resident who lives behind the famed Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

“The new city government has been a godsend--there are people who live here now who are trying to solve our problems,” said the resident, who requested anonymity.

Betty Rees, who has lived for nearly 20 years above the two-block stretch of the Sunset Strip that includes the Whiskey, the Roxy, Gazari’s and the Rainbow, concurred.

“We’ve been providing parking for these clubs for years,” Rees said. “So all this is all a big surprise to the club owners. But they’ve been abusing our rights for a long time.”

Business leaders and club owners say, however, that some of the proposals may be impossible to implement.

Doug Weston, who opened the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard near Doheny Drive as a jazz club and coffee house 30 years ago, predicted that the regulations could drive half the clubs out of business.

‘It’s Still a City’

“It’s OK to make West Hollywood a never-never land of happy people, but it’s still a city,” Weston said. “And it’s the businesses like the clubs that produce the activity of the city.”

Weston was especially scornful of a proposal to construct pissoirs, public urinals principally used in France, as a solution to the problem of patrons who relieve themselves on nearby lawns rather that wait in club restroom lines.

“They’re trying to create a neat, little city and for a while I went along with it,” said Weston, who initiated trash patrols by club employees three years ago in response to neighbors’ complaints.

“But when they start counting urinals, they’ve gone to far,” he said.

Weston, whose club presents mostly heavy metal rock groups, is also doubtful that the youthful crowd that frequents the Troubadour would be willing to pay for valet parking.

Mark Winogrond, the city’s director of community development, insisted that the regulations are not anti-nightclub.

Trying to Protect Residents

“We’re trying to emphasize that we need a working relationship with the club owners,” he said. “The problem is the clubs have existed for years and their land use was grandfathered in when we incorporated. We’re trying to allow the nightclubs to exist and protect the residents.”

Tony Melia, president of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said the city’s business leaders are trying to work out some unique solutions, such as providing parking for club-goers in the garages of the area’s large office buildings left vacant after dark.

The Chamber of Commerce has also set up a hot line to take complaints from residents, he said.

“Nightclubs are a West Hollywood heritage and tradition,” said Melia, pointing to world-famous nightspots like the Mocambo and the Trocadero that existed within the present city’s boundaries in past decades.

“The Sunset Strip was as raucous years ago as now and none of our residents ever get far away from a commercial establishment. To solve the problem is going to take a great deal of courtesy and understanding on everybody’s part.”