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JP’s, a new strip club set to open in Glover Park as early as this weekend, may have to do so with a much more scaled-back operation than they anticipated. The club, which was originally poised to open last weekend, faced many concerns from neighborhood advocates and competitors over the nature of its operation, specifically, its plans to include nude dancing on tables and separate alcoves for private dances.
The original JP’s was gutted by a two-alarm blaze in 2008, and was later bought out by new owners, BJ Enterprises. The new bosses planned to re-open the establishment earlier this month. But the concerns voiced by neighbors and competitors led to a hearing with the District’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board on Wednesday, where after hearing from an investigator with the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration and Paul Kadlick, a representative from JP’s, it ruled that the club could open, but it’d have to do so without table dancing or private alcoves, limiting the entertainment to two main stages.
As The Washington Post reports, this “marks a reversal of the board’s original stance that the club, JP’s, could open before board members considered whether substantial changes had been made there.” The board’s decision to allow the club to open in a diminished capacity was basically to appease the owners and workers at JP’s, who Kadlick says “cost employees work and the business revenue” because of their last-minute reversal.
Naturally, it makes sense that the community of the quiet, clean Northwest D.C. neighborhood would be opposed to a strip club opening, but those neighbors found an unlikely ally with the owners of competing strip clubs in the District, who strongly oppose the idea of private dancing alcoves, with one strip club proprietor telling the Post that “Washington has one of the cleanest strip club attitudes in the whole nation. This is going to change the whole city. If they allow this to open, I assure you other clubs will follow suit. You don’t want Washington to become like Las Vegas.” No, we certainly don’t.
Though a separate hearing will be held to discuss the issue of table-top and private dancing areas, Kadlick remains optimistic, saying that “a D.C. landmark is going to open.”
