New After-Hours Plan for LoDo

The Denver Post reports on the late-night tension between loft dwellers and revelers in LoDo.

Here are the current rules:

Rock Island owner David Clamage has a solution: Expand closing hour to 4 a.m.

Under the plan, no alcohol would be served past the state- mandated 2 a.m., but snacks, coffee and soft drinks would be available. Dancing and entertainment would continue, but clubs would reduce the area set aside for those amusements by 20 percent. New customers would be turned away.

….His “Four Point Plan (for) Nightclubs and Neighbors,” hammered out with help from owners of Bash, Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, The Church, Lotus and other clubs, also calls for more street patrols by off-duty police officers and private security personnel, improved lighting, and better signs about noise and litter

How would that help? Clubowners say patrons would have more time to sober up and they wouldn’t all exit the clubs and enter the streets at the same time, as they do now. The plan isn’t cheap. It would cost about $17,000.00 a month, in part to pay for private security and extra police. Clamage proposes that homeowners, businesses and liquor licenses share the cost.

Even if residents support the plan, it still has to pass Denver’s City Council. Mayor Hickenlooper, who lives in Lodo, responds:

“There is a chance that there would be less noise if bars stopped serving liquor at 2 but stayed open an extra hour or two,” Hickenlooper said. “That being said, if the neighbors don’t want to try it, then we shouldn’t.”

Several of the residents quoted in the article dispute the basic premise of the plan and fear that it will engender two more hours of noise and crime every night. Clamage has a point, though.

“The nightclub industry has offered a proposal with the idea that it would be fine-tuned,” he said. “The residents are offering nothing in return.”

The two sides should get together and hammer out a plan. Until they do, there’s always Uptown, NoDo and the Central Platte.