A downtown Mobile resident’s year-long video record of bad behavior outside a shuttered Dauphin Street bar became the centerpiece of an unusual public comment period at a recent Mobile City Council meeting, as the man urged council members to prevent the location from reopening under new ownership.
The resident, who lives near 455 Dauphin St., told the council he had spent more than a year recording footage from his apartment window after patrons of the bar that most recently operated there repeatedly urinated, vomited and fought outside the building. He said he began keeping the footage at the direction of Mobile police after reporting an incident in which he said employees of the bar urinated on his parked van during an ongoing dispute.
“This was taken to the police,” the resident told the council, recounting that an officer told him the bar had generated a high volume of calls for service and that police were preparing to investigate it using undercover officers. He said the officer asked him to document further incidents and hold off on pursuing charges related to the vehicle until that investigation concluded.
The resident compiled the footage into a roughly 13-minute video presentation, complete with an opening title sequence and organized into named segments highlighting specific incidents. He played portions of it for the council as part of his testimony.
The address at 455 Dauphin St. has cycled through several bar concepts over the years, most recently operating as Bizmark before closing. Longtime downtown residents will also recall the space’s earlier run as the original Soul Kitchen location, and, before that, as Southside Music Hall.
The resident said he came forward now because he had learned that people connected to the recently closed bar were exploring reopening the location under a different business name, and he wanted the council to weigh in before that happened.
“How much more punishment should be endured by the property owners of this block for the benefit of this one property?” he asked council members.
Brad Young, who owns the Soul Kitchen Music Hall brand as well as the building at 455 Dauphin St., addressed the council following the resident’s presentation. Young said he has been in discussions with a prospective operator who previously ran a different downtown bar with a clean track record, and confirmed that person is not affiliated with the ownership group behind Bizmark.
“Clearly, the Bizmark had some management issues, and we have measures to deal with those types of problems,” Young said. “But that location has been a bar for years, and as long as the liquor license has different owners on it, I don’t see any problem with it reopening.”
District Councilman William Carroll, whose district includes the downtown entertainment area, said the roughly seven incidents documented on the video occurred over the course of a year and argued that a similar volume of complaints could likely be compiled against most any bar in the downtown district over a comparable stretch of time.
Carroll acknowledged that the underlying behavior, including the reported incident involving the resident’s van, was unacceptable, but said any path forward will require compromise from both residents and bar owners as downtown Mobile continues to add housing near its nightlife corridor.
“Residents have to know what they are signing up for when they move downtown, and bar owners will have to be willing to work with the flux of new downtown residents,” Carroll said.
Carroll also pointed to the physical condition of many of downtown’s older commercial buildings as part of the underlying problem, suggesting that noise and disturbances are made worse by a lack of sound insulation in structures that were not originally designed to buffer residential neighbors from street-level bar activity.
“I think we also need to soundproof these old buildings — that’s part of the problem,” Carroll said. “When ownership transfers or there is new construction, we need to make sure they have some sort of sound barrier built into them.”
The exchange highlights a recurring tension in downtown Mobile as the area’s residential population grows alongside its long-established entertainment district. City officials have previously touted a wave of new apartment and loft development downtown, even as some new residents report friction with the noise, foot traffic and occasional unruly behavior that can accompany a concentration of bars and music venues.
Enforcement of nuisance behavior tied to bars in Mobile typically falls to a combination of the Mobile Police Department and the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which has authority over liquor licenses and can take action against establishments found to have repeated, serious violations. Because liquor licenses in Alabama are generally tied to the individual license holder rather than the physical address, a bar that closes under one owner’s license can be permitted to reopen under a new owner even at the same location, provided the new applicant meets state licensing requirements.
No formal action was taken by the council on the matter, and it remains unclear whether a new business will ultimately open at the Dauphin Street address. Young indicated discussions with a prospective new operator were ongoing.