Arts venue struggles to reopen in Arts District
Police, planners and neighbors object to site of new Skinny
By Chris Busby
The long effort to reopen The Skinny, a downtown performing arts venue that closed four years ago, is being opposed by police, city planning officials and neighbors concerned the business will increase noise and crime in the Arts District. The Portland City Council is expected to consider The Skinny’s request for liquor and entertainment licenses and a zoning exemption at its June 18 meeting.
Skinny proprietor Johnny Lomba has partnered with former Stone Coast Brewing Company manager Todd Doyle and other investors to resurrect the venue in an old bank building on the corner of Forest Avenue and Congress Street – a spot last occupied years ago by the dive bar Whits End. The Skinny began life in a former porn theater a couple blocks up Congress Street from its prospective new home. (It closed in early 2003 when the theater’s owner sold the building to an entrepreneur who’d planned to operate a dance club there, but failed to get the doors open.)
The Skinny will need a zoning exception to operate on that corner because the City Council changed the zoning on the block ten years ago in reaction to complaints about crowds outside Zootz, the Forest Avenue dance club that closed over half a decade ago. The new zoning prohibits “drinking establishments” and “chem-free night clubs” on Forest Avenue between Cumberland Avenue and Congress Street, where over 150 apartments, most housing elderly residents, are located.
The Skinny’s entrance would face Congress Street, but the zoning includes its building. There would be a restaurant on the bank building’s first floor, but the second floor would have a stage and a bar, and patrons would occasionally be charged a cover for shows. Those circumstances require the owners to get a lounge license for the second floor, but in so doing, they would be considered a “drinking establishment” under the zoning definition.
Doyle and Lomba have attempted to make the case that The Skinny is not strictly a “drinking establishment,” but rather an arts venue that serves food and alcohol to help pay the bills. In its prior incarnation, The Skinny hosted live music by local and national acts, theater productions, film screenings, poetry events and art exhibits. The new location would offer the same mix of art and entertainment, and continue the educational and scholarship programs begun before the previous location closed.
“What we’re doing is a perfect fit for what [city officials] originally wanted to do with the Arts District,” said Lomba. “I just really hope we can do our part to contribute to the Arts District’s continued growth and development.”
At two previous meetings on the zoning change, the Portland Police Department sent officers to voice opposition, citing concerns The Skinny will cause crowd problems similar to those outside Zootz. The department did not respond to The Bollard‘s request for additional comment.
Several downtown residents and business owners also oppose The Skinny’s request for a zoning exemption, citing similar concerns about rowdy crowds. However, some of those opposed say they’re not worried about The Skinny itself, given the owners’ business plan and record of responsibly operating similar establishments. It’s the prospect that zoning could be changed to allow a lounge-license-holder to occupy the building if The Skinny closes that’s of concern, they said.
Among this group are Penny Carson and her brother, Harold Pachios, the high-powered lawyer and lobbyist with the firm Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios. The siblings own several commercial properties on Congress Street, including the Congress Street building next to The Skinny’s proposed location.
When Whits End occupied the bank building, Carson said she had to have her properties’ entryways washed every morning to remove urine and human feces. If a similar establishment is someday allowed to operate there, Carson said she worries those problems will reappear.
Despite his considerable personal wealth, Pachios cried poor in making his argument against the zoning change during the May 22 planning board hearing on the matter. “We’re struggling,” he said in reference to his downtown holdings. “We don’t make a nickel on the building next door.”
Downtown Portland “is never gonna be a big retail center,” Pachios told the planning board. He said condominiums and housing for the elderly are now more appropriate uses for downtown real estate, and establishments whose primary business is the sale of alcohol are incompatible with those uses. “We’re not talking about them,” he added, referring to The Skinny, but “they could sell [the business]” to a less responsible operator.
The planning board unanimously voted not to recommend the zoning change The Skinny is seeking, but several board members said they like the business’ plans for the space and would have preferred a zoning request tailored specifically to its property, rather than one that could affect the zoning on the rest of the block.
Since no reasons have emerged to deny Doyle and Lomba the requisite liquor and entertainment licenses, The Skinny’s fate will hinge on the Council’s willingness to amend the zoning.
The current Council has shown a preference for using zoning to address potential problems with music and arts venues, rather than focusing on problem operators on an individual basis. Earlier this year, the Council created a new zoning rule that requires businesses offering both entertainment and alcohol to be at least 100 feet from one another – a restriction that nearly nixes The Skinny’s plans, given its building’s proximity to Portland Stage Company, which is a little more than 100 feet down the block.
Background materials compiled by city staff for The Skinny’s zoning request show that the debate over using zoning versus business-specific measures to address problems was taking place prior to the decision to rezone the block around Zootz.
Writing on behalf of the Arts District Interim Group, an early city advisory body created to help shape the then-nascent Arts District, co-chairman Peter Quesada expressed the group’s opposition to the Zootz zone. The group determined that the zoning “does not further the mission of the Arts District,” he wrote.
Portland’s Downtown District, the quasi-municipal organization that promotes and helps maintain the Arts District and Old Port, also opposed the zoning at the time, as did the Congress Street Advisory Committee, yet another group charged with advising the city on policies affecting downtown.
In a letter to city officials sent in February of 1997, PDD outlined concerns that included “[u]sing zoning changes to solve a limited problem with a single property,” and “[r]estricting a generally desirable use (dancing and socializing) in the Arts District, simply because certain aspects of the specific situation are out of line.”
In an e-mail to city planning staff sent on May 3 of this year, PDD’s current executive director, Jan Beitzer, wrote that her organization supports The Skinny’s zoning change request. However, in a follow-up letter sent May 21, Beitzer informed city officials that PDD’s board of directors, after further review of planning documents, no longer supports the request “as currently proposed,” but favors a formal rezoning process that will give member businesses more opportunity to comment.
