Owner of strip club calls it quits in Cape Girardeau

Talk to David Capps about his more than a decade as a strip-club owner in Cape Girardeau, and he sounds like a man defeated.

"I'm out of the club business in Cape Girardeau," Capps said Wednesday. "I've been fighting it for 10 years. It's been one hill to climb after another. After a while, you just get tired."

It was a fight from the start in 1995, when Capps announced plans for Regina's House of Dolls at 805 Enterprise St. There were court battles, petitions and protests -- even arrests. The fight ended recently when Capps decided to close the renamed Stephanie's Cabaret and leave for the less-restrictive confines of Illinois.

And not everyone is sorry to see him -- or his scantily clad employees -- go.

"The politically correct answer is that I'm not pleased they are gone. The honest answer is that I am pleased," said Mayor Jay Knudtson. "Cape Girardeau is not desirous of being home to this type of business."

Al Spradling III, a Cape Girardeau lawyer who was mayor of Cape Girardeau when the strip club first opened, said Wednesday: "They're gone? Good."

Capps, who recently opened the Big Blue Martini in East Cape Girardeau, Ill., wasn't surprised by the reaction. He said city leaders and state Division of Liquor Control "never liked the nature of the business. From the day it opened, it was in the news for a solid year."

When Capps announced he was opening Regina's in January 1995, opposition immediately sprung up from residents, asking that the Cape Girardeau City Council deny a request for a liquor license. David Capps and his wife, Stephanie, already owned a strip club in Paducah, Ky., where their Night Clubs Inc. was based.

The council granted a liquor license, despite a petition with 1,900 signatures. At the time, the council said it had no legal grounds to deny the request.

Opponents organized, trying to figure out a way to shut down the strip club before it opened. When the strip club opened in February 1995, a handful of protesters showed up.

"No strippers," one sign read.

"Thou shalt not uncover thy nakedness," read another.

After the strip club opened and another -- a short-lived one called the Alibi Club -- followed suit, the council decided to create its first measure that would regulate so-called adult businesses. Spradling said was a direct response to Regina's and the Alibi.

Members of the council, Spradling included, felt that if they couldn't stop a strip club from opening, they could enact strict restrictions.

Under the new ordinance, dancers couldn't be nude, had to wear "opaque pasties" over their nipples and had to be at least 10 feet from customers. Tips could not be put in a dancer's G-string; instead, they had to go into a tip basket that also had to be 10 feet from the dancers.

Licensing requirements for entertainers and the establishment were enacted and any new strip clubs couldn't be located within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, public parks, day-care facilities or residential areas.

"It was ridiculous," Capps recalled. "The regulations there made it awful hard to make money."

Knudtson said he commends Spradling and the former council for enacting such a strict ordinance.

"It probably was strict so that it would be very difficult to comply," Knudtson said. "I'm sure it was a very tough endeavor for Mr. Capps. But it's not the type of commerce we want in our city."

Asked if that was a moral judgment, Knudtson didn't relent: "I think it's a judgment this mayor has the ability to make. If somebody doesn't like that decision, they can elect a new mayor," he said.

Two months after the ordinance was enacted in 1995, city prosecutors filed charges against two Regina's employees -- a dancer for getting too close to the customer and the manager for allowing it to happen.

Capps hired a lawyer, David Rosener, to argue that the ordinance was unconstitutional.

"We really could not comply with that ordinance," Rosener said at the time, "unless we would physically drop the dancers onto the stage from the ceiling."

A municipal judge eventually ruled against Regina's motion to dismiss the charges, saying that the city had the authority to regulate adult businesses. Then the city followed up by filing 17 more charges against nine employees of the club for not getting an "independent contractor's license" or an adult entertainment license for the club.

Regina's lawyers appealed the charges, and a trial date was set for seven defendants. All seven were found guilty, and a Ste. Genevieve County judge levied $1,500 in fines and $280 in court costs.

But that was just the start.

Over the years, Regina's -- which was renamed Stephanie's Cabaret in 2003 -- was cited for violating the ordinance several times. Often, undercover Cape Girardeau police officers witnessed the violations, according to news accounts.

Summonses were issued to 12 people in 1996 -- a year that also saw an arson attempt on the building. In 1998, five Regina's dancers were cited for "dancing too close." In 1999, there were four citations for the same infraction.

Citations came again in 2001, and Regina's lost its liquor license for 20 days in January 2002 after 12 counts of lewdness were filed. Four employees were ticketed in 2004.

Then police chief Steve Strong considered recommending the council not renew the club's liquor license over what he called a "pattern of violations over a decade." Strong cited simulated sexual acts by dancers and customers and prohibited exposure by the dancers repeatedly violated the ordinance.

The council, now led by Knudtson, extended the license for only six months last year rather than a year as part of a probationary period. The nightclub also came close to losing its state liquor license in 2005.

Capps eventually decided to close the strip club, which unceremoniously shut its doors about the same time that the Big Blue Martini opened over the summer. He is in negotiations to sell the building to a Scott City machine shop owner.

Many of the strippers opted for Illinois before Capps did, leaving to work at the Hush Puppy, which is also just across the bridge.

"I lost all my girls," he said. "I just wasn't making any money. At one time, I had 40 girls working here."

There were other factors. Unlike Missouri bars, which must close by 1:30 a.m., Illinois allows bars to stay open until 5 a.m. Capps said Illinois doesn't have "nonsense regulations" about dancers, who can give lap-dances, accept tips in G-strings and dance totally nude.

"It's been wonderful over there," said Capps, who now owns 12 strip clubs in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. His Missouri clubs are in Columbia and Springfield, and he is in negotiations to buy two existing clubs in the Bootheel.

"I'm not done in Missouri," he said. "I'm just done in Cape Girardeau."

That's fine with Spradling.

"If they're going to violate the law, it's best they leave town," Spradling said.

Knudtson agreed.

"If another one was proposed today, I would say, 'Welcome to Cape Girardeau, here is the ordinance, here is the law you must abide by,'" he said. "And they'd better be darn sure they understand the language within that ordinance."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137