(WHAS11) – Problems at a Portland club have gotten so bad some residents and members of the neighborhood association are taking steps to get it closed…for good.
But the plan to shut it down could mean consequences for other nearby businesses. They would have to stop selling alcohol.
John Owen is on a mission to get the 63 signatures needed to call a wet-dry election.
That’s because he wants to see the Goodtimes Club on West Main Street close if the precinct it's located in is voted dry...meaning no alcohol can be distributed.
He says the clientele is too disruptive to the neighborhood.
“What these guys are doing, that’s what the problem is. People urinating in the bush; somebody behind the storage company having sex on top of the car,” John Owen, Portland Neighborhood Association, said.
Some neighbors agree.
Like Sue Wathen who lives down the street from the club and says people are outside of it well past 4 a.m.
“People have to work. They get up and they have no sleep because of those people down there. Some people work,” Wathen, lives down the street from club, said.
When we went to Goodtimes nobody was inside and nobody answered the phone.
The ordinance John Owen is hoping for will cover the Portland neighborhood from Owen Street south to Magazine Street and 22nd west to 24th Street.
If this dry ordinance where to go into effect, not only would Goodtimes, but other places that sold alcohol, like Lories Liquors, would be affected. Lories Liquors has been in business for more than forty years.
“My life depends on this store. I have a family and kids. I support other family members,” Ghassan Omari, owner of Lorie’s Liquors, said. “This is my life.”
Ghassan Omari has owned Lorie's for almost seven years and hopes Owen finds another way to handle the situation without affecting his business.
