Topeka ? Last Call owner Dennis Steffes said Friday that city officials told him if he changed his crowd and music they would stop trying to get rid of his liquor license.

“It was a racial issue,” said Steffes, who said that Last Call, 729 N.H., played hip-hop music and attracted mostly black customers.

Steffes was in court asking Shawnee County State District Judge David Bruns to allow him to continue serving alcoholic beverages while he appeals the decision of a state agency that denied renewal of his liquor license.

Bruns took no immediate action after the two-hour hearing. He ordered attorneys to submit written briefs by Feb. 20.

After the hearing, Steffes’ attorney, Daniel Owen, reiterated Steffes’ claim.

Owen said he had a phone conversation with Lawrence City Manager David Corliss and Corliss said, “Change his music and change his crowd and we’ll back off.”

Owen said he wouldn’t have revealed the conversation but the subject was raised in court by Sarah Byrne, a state assistant attorney general.

But Corliss said he never said such a thing. He said he told Steffes and Owen that Steffes needed to make changes to make his club safer.

“I don’t know if it’s music. We have 120 drinking establishments in the community and his is the one that has an increased level of violence,” Corliss said.

During the court hearing, Byrne asked Steffes if city officials had offered to stop trying to seek nonrenewal of his liquor license if he made some changes. Steffes said he was told if he stopped playing hip-hop music he wouldn’t get so much “pressure.”

He said the city targeted his establishment “because of the makeup of our patronage,” which he described as more than 90 percent black.

Byrne then said, “So basically the only thing preventing you from applying for a new license for that same location is your determination to stick to the hip-hop format.”

Later, Scott Miller, an attorney for the city who attended the hearing, said race had nothing to do with city efforts against Steffes.

“This is a matter of what happens inside and outside the club that violates criminal law and not who the actors are,” Miller said.

Lawrence police have contended there has been rampant drug use and violence in and around the club. And they said Steffes’ hired security would warn patrons when the police were coming in.

Owen denied those allegations, describing police complaints about the club as ridiculous and overblown. He said after five weeks of police undercover surveillance of the club, police found “one marijuana joint and some dancing that the authorities don’t like.”

Owen said the nonrenewal of the liquor license handed down by the Kansas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was unreasonable and would cause irreparable financial harm to Steffes unless he is allowed to keep serving liquor during the appeals process, which could take years.

Since the nonrenewal in December, Last Call has opened one or two days a week as a bring-your-own-alcohol establishment, which doesn’t require a state license.

But Steffes said the club is doing about 10 percent of the business it did before.

“It has pretty much been a disaster. It has pretty much brought us to our knees,” he said of the state action. “I don’t know how we’re making it now. It’s a pretty stressful time,” he said.

Byrne, however, argued that Steffes also owns Coyotes and that liquor license remains in effect.

But Steffes said Coyotes also was losing money, partly because of the city ordinance that prohibits smoking in public indoor places.