Mar 07, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Club Chaos, a gay restaurant and bar that operated on the 17th Street, N.W., entertainment strip near Dupont Circle for the past decade, closed its doors last week while its owner asked the city to inactivate but retain the club’s liquor license.

The Feb. 27 closing came at a time when the Dupont Circle Citizens Association and a group of 17 nearby residents were moving forward with a protest against the license on grounds that Chaos was operating illegally as a nightclub disguised as a restaurant and creating excessive noise.

“We regret to inform you that at this time we are temporarily closed for business,” said a recorded message responding to a phone call to Chaos on Feb. 29. “We are also in the process of relocating to a new location,” the message said.

Carlos Aguilar, who is listed in city records as an officer of the company that owns Chaos, could not be reached for comment. The club’s attorney, Michael Fonseca, said the lease for the basement space at 1603 17th Street, N.W., where Chaos operated, expired at the end of February and the club decided not to renew it.

Cynthia Simms, a spokesperson for the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, said that although Chaos’s liquor license was under challenge, neither the board nor another city agency forced the club to close.

“They just turned in their license,” Simms said.

Earlier this month, Aguilar told long-time customers and a number of the entertainers who regularly performed drag shows at Chaos that the ABC Board informed him that he could not offer live entertainment unless he obtained a change in his liquor license known as an “entertainment endorsement.”

Aguilar said he was scrambling to apply for the change but worried that the pending protest against his license would delay the process. He told customers that business had dropped significantly after the city barred him from offering entertainment and he did not know whether he would be able to stay in business much longer.

Rob Halligan, president of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, said the group’s aim was to force Chaos to comply with city laws and regulations pertaining to noise and entertainment.

“We never wanted to close it down,” he said.

Halligan said DCCA members as well as members of the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission said the entertainment endorsement requirement was well known among restaurant owners in the area. Aguilar told Metro Weekly magazine that city regulators never informed him about the requirement.

Halligan and others who challenged the Chaos license said it was obvious to them that the club was never in compliance with a separate city regulation calling for restaurants to generate at least 45 percent of their revenue from the sale of food. In early February, at the prodding of neighborhood activists, the ABC Board conducted an audit of Chaos’ sales receipts and determined it was not in compliance with the 45 percent food requirement. That development most likely would have added fuel to the liquor license challenges filed by the DCCA and the 17 residents, people familiar with Chaos said.

One person familiar with the city’s liquor license procedures said Aguilar could have done more.

“You have to work with the neighborhood people ... Carlos never did that.”

D.C. gay nightlife advocate Mark Lee, who often is at odds with the DCCA and the Dupont Circle ANC, said the Chaos closing could be a harbinger of more nightlife business closings on 17th Street. He noted that other businesses have recently closed on the street, leaving several vacant storefront buildings.

“I find it interesting that the DCCA is saying it never wanted Chaos to close,” said Lee. “But they continued to protest its license and continued to create hurdles that made it difficult to stay in business.”