Norfolk City Council shut down another nightclub Tuesday night, the fifth by the city since it began cracking down on late-night establishments after two shootings.
The closure followed a different path than the others, but ended with the same result: Caior Bistro & Social, a nightclub on Granby Street in the city’s NEON District, is now out of business.
Caior’s existing nightclub permit, approved in 2020, expired in September. The club applied to renew the permit, which allows it to stay open until 2 a.m. with live music, but the council denied the permit Tuesday over allegations of repeated zoning violations and police calls for service. An attorney for the club objected to those claims.
The council voted 6-2 with little discussion to deny a permit application for Caior. City officials had recommended the council reject the renewal.
When reached by phone Wednesday, Caior’s attorney, Steve Heretick, called the claims about zoning violations and repeated police calls “erroneous” and said he believed Caior, a Black-owned business, was being treated differently than white-owned businesses in the area.
City planning officials contend Caior violated city zoning regulations three times between 2020 and 2022. The club was cited for a violation in 2021 because its floor plan differed from the floor plan outlined in its initial permit application. It was cited for another violation in June because its windows were too dark. Both issues were corrected by Caior, according to city documents.
A third violation came in August when the city said it discovered that a company not listed on Caior’s conditional use permit had begun operating the establishment. The city did not identify the name of the entity that operating Caior, but said it required the club to close in August until the company listed on the permit, Neon Liv LLC, was reinstated as the owner.
City officials also said Caior was issued a summons by the Norfolk Police Department in 2021 for exceeding its occupancy limit by 170 people, and that the police had been called to the establishment nine times since September 2020.
The city’s Planning Commission, however, recommended the council approve the renewal of Caior’s permit if Caior agreed to limit its closing time to midnight.
On Tuesday, Heretick asked the council to continue the public hearing to a later date. He told The Pilot that the city council “made its decision based on bad information.”
Heretick said police calls for service were for incidents that occurred in a parking lot across the street from Caior, and that police had never responded to calls inside the building. He also said the zoning violations had been corrected.
He told the newspaper that Caior’s owner, Clarence Reynolds, “invested his time and considerable resources” in the business.
“He’s been a manager on the ground in that business every day, and it’s been a successful business for the two years it’s been open, recognizing even when he started, it was during Covid and they weren’t even able to open for the first few months,” Heretick said.
Heretick said he also represents several white-owned businesses in downtown Norfolk that have never had to meet the requirements asked of Caior when applying for a conditional use permit application. He said Caior has had to “meet requirements that no one else has had to meet” and has been met with “all kinds of strange and unanticipated obstacles” such as the city’s scrutiny of the nightclub’s ownership.
“I represent a number of white-owned businesses and restaurants that get CUP’s without any issue at all,” Heretick told The Pilot. “Just by comparison, I see a huge difference between the way that other businesses have been treated and the way this business, for example, was treated.”
Heretick also said the city is creating an “apartheid economy” in downtown Norfolk “where black businesses cannot succeed and cannot survive.”
Of the five nightclubs shut down by the city and City Council since September, four were minority-owned, including Caior. Another that was closed was white-owned but had primarily Black clientele. The city has previously denied allegations of racial bias in its crackdown on Norfolk nightlife.
City officials vowed a more forceful approach to reining in rising crime in the downtown area after a trio of high-profile, violent incidents took place downtown.
A shooting in March outside Chicho’s Backstage on Granby Street left one person injured and three dead, including a Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press reporter. An April shooting at MacArthur Center mall left one dead and two injured. And a shooting outside Legacy Restaurant and Lounge left four people were injured in August, including a Norfolk Sheriff’s deputy.
Since then, the city closed Culture Lounge and Restaurant for violations of its operating permit, and the City Council voted to close Legacy, California Burrito and Scotty Quixx.
Daniel Berti, daniel.berti@virginiamedia.com
