It’s time to take concerns about violence surrounding Lawrence bars and nightclubs to state regulators who oversee liquor licenses, city commissioners decided Tuesday.

Commissioners unanimously said they wanted City Manager David Corliss to have a conversation with members of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control division as soon as today. They want to find out what the city can do to officially request that a liquor license be revoked from a bar or nightclub that frequently is the subject of complaints about violence.

“We need to be doing what we can do right now,” Mayor Mike Amyx said.

Commissioners, though, stopped short of naming clubs or bars that the city may want the state to review. Instead, Amyx said he was looking for general information about the state’s process. But he also instructed the Lawrence Police Department to begin compiling data on the numbers and types of calls that are made about the city’s various nightclubs and bars.

The meeting was full of references to the number of guns that recently have been seized in the downtown area. Police leaders have reported that they have responded to numerous gun-related incidents at or near the area of Last Call, 729 N.H.

Licensing system

Members of the city’s bar and live music industry said they would prefer that the city work on aggressively dealing with individual problem locations rather than creating a proposed licensing system, which would allow the city to regulate how certain entertainment-oriented business must operate.

“I’m here to tell you that my employees are scared to go home on Saturday nights,” said Brett Mosiman, an owner of The Bottleneck, a longtime nightclub that is in the same block as Last Call. “Everybody knows what the problem is here, and it is not going to be fixed by a broad-brush ordinance. I think you can call the director of the ABC tomorrow.”

An attempt to reach Dennis Steffes, an owner of Last Call, was unsuccessful Tuesday night.

Several commissioners agreed that creating a city licensing system was not their first choice, but they said it was an option they would consider if they thought that working with state ABC leaders was not productive in solving local problems.

“I’m a little leery of a new licensing system because it may have unintended consequences,” said Commissioner Mike Rundle, who expressed concern that the licensing system could inadvertently damage the city’s music scene.

Several bar owners and music promoters echoed that concern, saying the city hosted more than 1,800 concerts in 2006 that contributed sales tax and other revenues to the city.

Amyx, though, did say he would appoint a committee of commissioners, bar owners and neighborhood representatives to examine what a new licensing system might look like.

Urging action

But several residents urged city commissioners to take some action. Jerry Wells, a former Douglas County district attorney, told commissioners that reports of gun seizures in downtown Lawrence represented a serious community problem.

“What we’re facing here are members of a violent subculture,” Wells said. “They are a very small percentage of the people, but they have impacts disproportionate to their size.

“They’re confrontational in nature, react violently to any slight – real or imagined – and most seriously, they have weapons with them and are very dangerous.”

Ted Boyle, president of the North Lawrence Improvement Association, also urged commissioners to look at all parts of the city when considering new regulations. He said members of the association long have had concerns about some establishments in their neighborhood.

Commissioners, however, also were warned to be sensitive to singling out certain establishments because of the type of music they played or the race of the crowd that they attracted. The Last Call, for example, frequently has a hip-hop music night.

“What this will sound like to some people is that we want to get rid of black people who come to Last Call,” said Jesse Jackson, a music promoter who has staged shows at the venue.

Commissioners said that was not their intention at all. They also said that the majority of bar and nightclub operators in the city were responsible, community-oriented business people.