MAYOR BILL CAMPBELL: "allegations…as serious as any we've had in history." \nATLANTA - Mayor Bill Campbell has hit the Gold Club in the moneybelt - the mayor suspended the strip club's liquor license Monday, five days after the federal government indicted the club's owner and several staffers in a wide-ranging racketeering indictment that includes allegations of prostitution, money laundering, police corruption, and paying protection to the Gambino organized crime family.
Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan has denied the allegations. Attorneys for the club say they will fight to restore the liquor license and protect the club's right to make money, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The allegations raised on this business are as serious as any we've had here in history," Campbell tells the paper. "After careful review of the documentation and on the recommendations of Atlanta Police Chief [Beverly] Harvard, I am suspending the liquor license of the Gold Club."
One of the club's attorneys, Alan Begner, says the nightspot will stay open despite being banned from pouring alcohol. He hopes to have a hearing by Tuesday afternoon on an injunction that would lift the suspension, which he says, came without a proper hearing. "We're in the alcohol business," he says. "Alcohol and nude dancing just go together."
The Journal says customers kept coming to the club Monday night, but they were not willing to say what they thought of not being able to buy drinks.
Begner says adult entertainment pours a huge nut into Atlanta's economy and are a prime reason conventioneers choose the city. "More than 60 percent of the people who go to these clubs are from out of town," he says. "If this city didn't have these clubs, there would be no convention business here. There's nothing else for people to do here."
Atlanta's Licenses and Review Board will hear the suspension case Dec. 8 and recommend whether to revoke the Gold Club license permanently, the Journal says.
