Club owner meets with neighbors, police

Pat Buck put it all out on the table.

"I truly apologize," he said. "I truly apologize for any disturbances I've caused you guys over the last two weeks."

Buck operates the new Taste pool hall at 402 Good Hope St., which reopened as an alcohol-free club Oct. 10 after having been closed for two and a half years. Almost simultaneously with the reopening, neighbors started complaining about crowds creating noise, trash and traffic.

Buck and his wife, Tamara, met with those neighbors Monday night, along with five police representatives and city council member Charlie Herbst, at the Cape Girardeau Police Department Good Hope Substation. The meeting was suggested by Buck, who hoped some solutions could arise that everyone could live -- and sleep -- with.

To keep his patrons from parking next to his neighbor's homes, Buck offered to pay for either orange pylon cones or bright tape to be placed on the street alongside the houses.

Going the distance

"I'm going to work with you in any way possible," he said. "We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, too. We are willing to go the distance with you guys to eliminate the noise, loud traffic, vehicle horns and the looping."

But he said if the neighbors simply had a problem with the pool hall existing period, he couldn't solve for them. He said prostitutes and drug dealers on the streets should be a bigger concern.

"We did not open a crack house, we opened a pool hall," Buck said. "Don't stereotype us with the people who bring those drugs into your neighborhood."

Neighbor Dolly Schlue assured him the group had nothing against his business or him personally. They were simply afraid of a "rerun."

Police Capt. Carl Kinnison praised for Buck's efforts at the Phat Cat, a nightclub on Broadway that his wife owns and he manages. Kinnison said the Bucks keep troublemakers out and the street picked up.

However, local landlord LaVonna Jones, who owns several homes near the Taste, didn't mince words when she expressed her dismay at the possibility of losing tenants.

"Your business is threatening my business," she said. "And I'm going to get upset about that."

Buck's offer to clear their yards of trash left by patrons and to provide "no parking" cones sounded like a great first step to resident Nelson Sparks.

"I think it'd be a good idea and it's gracious of you to offer to do that," he said to Buck.

Throughout the meeting, Buck and the neighbors went back and forth about the problems. He affirmed to them his belief that if the parked cars can be moved up the block to his lot away from the homes, then most of their concerns can go away.

Kinnison said police would have to examine the traffic needs along the block before giving the go ahead for blocking off the parking spaces, but he said it was likely "very do-able."

Resident Peggy Winchester said Buck deserves their cooperation -- for now.

"Let's give them a chance," she said. "Then, after two or three weeks, we'll meet again and see how it went and we'll go from there."

mwells@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160