A decision by a city committee will allow late-night downtown partiers to rave on — if they play by the rules.
Conditions of the existing business licence for Y Afterhours, a downtown rave club with a dodgy history and notorious reputation, were revamped yesterday by the city’s quasi-judicial standing committee, much to the dismay of club bosses Oliver Friedmann and Anthony Donohue.
Under the new conditions, staff at the Y will have to keep ravers inside without allowing re-entry and refuse any new patrons after 4 a.m., a decision management said could be deadly, as a majority of incoming traffic arrives between 4 and 5 a.m.
The initial recommendation by the committee was to shut the front doors at 3 a.m., but was changed upon further review, based on the fact that many patrons work in the service industry and can’t make it to the club any earlier.
“It’s still going to negatively affect the business,” said Friedmann. “The difference is that had we been forced to close at 3 a.m., the business would have been closed in weeks or days whereas now it will still harm it but give it a fighting chance.”
The parking lot adjacent to the club has been a notorious hot-spot for drug trafficking and drug busts over the years. Friedmann said that though they’ve moved the front door, installed closed-circuit cameras, and have more security than 15,000-plus capacity venues, they can’t curb criminal activity in the parking lot.
The club formerly known as Therapy Afterhours, located deep in the belly of the historic Old Citadel building on 102 Street, has been home to late-night adrenaline junkies for nearly a decade.
One of two surviving licensed after-hours clubs in the city, it’s now the only one in existence with a no re-entry policy.
“We feel that the no re-entry policy is onerous and unfair. It places a competitive disadvantage on our business,” Friedmann said, adding he feels the policy should be made a bylaw to all after-hours clubs, not singling out Y Afterhours.
-victoria.handysides@metronews.ca
