Baltimore law could expand live entertainment options 

Posted: 4:04 pm Mon, November 23, 2009
By Robbie Whelan
Daily Record Business Writer

Errez Segman owns a three-story row house in the Hollins Market neighborhood of West Baltimore that he wants to make into a jazz club called Back Alley Jazz.

But it wasn’t until Monday morning, when Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon signed into law an ordinance that will make live entertainment more widespread in Baltimore’s clubs, bars and theaters, that his plan was even possible. Now, he plans to open the 1920s-themed club on New Year’s Eve, assuming he gets all his permits and licenses in order.

“Without the bill, we would be shut down before we opened, with half a million dollars invested,” Segman said. “The whole place is focused on having live jazz in the spot. Otherwise it makes no sense.”

The bill, which was introduced in the spring, modified after extensive committee review and public hearings, and approved in October, defines live entertainment as a permitted use under the city’s zoning code. It will allow restaurants and taverns near residential neighborhoods to host live performances of music, DJs, magic shows and dancing.

Under the existing zoning law, live entertainment and dancing are allowed only in venues zoned B3, a designation that represents dense commercial areas. Most restaurants are zoned B1 and B2, two common zoning categories for bars and restaurants located near residential neighborhoods.

The bill was largely the pet project of City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who said Monday that she had spent part of last week visiting venues that might benefit from having live entertainment, including Clementine, a restaurant on Harford Road.

“It was Tuesday night, taco night [at Clementine] … They said they’d love to have an acoustic guitar and a singer,” Rawlings-Blake said. Under the new ordinance, live music will be permitted at the restaurant. “I told them I couldn’t wait to come back on taco night and have some live music there.”

In meetings with city officials, community members, particularly from South Baltimore’s Federal Hill neighborhood, have criticized the bill, saying that it will bring traffic, noise and other disruptions to city neighborhoods, and that the community does not have proper recourse to address problem bars.

Rawlings-Blake said Monday that these concerns were legitimate, but noted that there are still two regulating bodies for live entertainment concerns, the city’s zoning laws and the state-appointed liquor board.

“The liquor board has enforcement and the city has enforcement. There are a lot of tools that we put to make sure there are proper community safeguards,” she said.

In what she called a “consensus-building” move, Rawlings-Blake said that two similar bills had been introduced, one that gives the city more control over take-outs and other restaurants where violence or rowdy behavior happens, and another that allows the city to revoke conditional use permits, which allow businesses to provide a number of services to customers, including serving food, having outdoor seating and displaying public art.

An early draft of the bill raised questions about which agency, the city or the state liquor board, had the authority to make the final decision on which venues could host live entertainment.

Stephan Fogleman, a Baltimore lawyer who chairs the liquor board, said those issues had been hammered out in committee.

“The old bill would have possibly stripped the ability of the board to conduct an inquiry prior to granting a liquor license to an establishment,” he said. “They wanted to allow zoning to make the ultimate determination about live entertainment.”

Under the new ordinance, tavern and restaurant owners that serve alcohol will have to petition both the zoning and liquor boards for permission to host live events, but more venues will be eligible. Fogleman said the bill is “opening a lot more areas in the city to be considered by zoning and liquor.”

“If you have a magic show for kids, you don’t need to come before us. For the other 98 percent of live entertainment where the sale of alcohol seems popular, you’ll have to come to us, still,” he said.

Also struck from the original bill was the creation of a new panel with a hefty budget to review and rule on live entertainment applications, and a live entertainment fee to be levied on existing club owners.