It's Final: Papagayo's Spotlight Winks Out -- Strip Club Succumbs To Protest, Law

BELLEVUE - After losing a bruising legal battle with the city, the last strip club here has closed.

"We've shut the doors on Papagayo's, due to harassment and selective law enforcement," nude-dance promoter Frank Colacurcio Jr. declared yesterday.

Colacurcio, whose father, Frank Colacurcio Sr., virtually invented the Northwest's nude-dance business, said the Overlake club couldn't turn a profit under a city ordinance intended to keep dancers and customers at arm's length.

The demise of Papagayo's, which comes four months after the former nightclub reopened as an alcohol-free strip club, elated citizens who had protested its presence in a shopping area patronized by families.

"Praise the Lord!" said protester Kitty England when she learned the club had shut down. England and other members of the nearby Westminster Chapel organized daily picketing, though that was reduced a month ago to three nights a week.

Papagayo's is the third club to succumb to a city ordinance that increasingly is viewed as a model for other cities seeking to regulate nude clubs. Babe's, a Factoria club that opened in December with female strippers and switched to a male revue in January, closed after being found in contempt of court for the second time.

Deja Vu-Bellevue abandoned plans to put nude dancers on stage on "auto row" - 116th Avenue Northeast - after King County Superior Court Judge Carol Schapira upheld the city's adult-cabaret ordinance.

The last performances at Papagayo's were Sunday night, just two days after Schapira refused to reconsider her earlier decision.

Schapira's ruling that cities can set minimum lighting standards and minimum distances between dancers and customers has sent shock waves through an industry that has enjoyed a decade of rapid expansion and high profits.

Attorneys for Papagayo's and Deja Vu said they intend to appeal the ruling directly to the state Supreme Court. If the city of Bellevue wins on appeal, it could be a crippling blow for the industry. If club owners win, Bellevue will face large damage claims. The City Council already has budgeted $375,000 in legal and police costs.

In a trial that provided new insights into the economics of the nude-dance business, a Deja Vu executive said the Bellevue club was expected to make as much money as a Tacoma club that grosses $1.5 million and nets a $343,750 profit annually.

Perhaps three times that much money would have passed between customers and dancers in exchange for intimate table dances, according to Deja Vu's attorney.

By keeping customers and dancers at least four feet apart, Bellevue's adult-cabaret ordinance is intended to discourage sexual contact.

Colacurcio Jr. said yesterday that his industry has gotten a bum rap. He said stabbings, drug dealing, assaults and public drunkenness were commonplace before Papagayo's was converted from a conventional nightclub to a nude cabaret.

"The type of nightclub business that was there before, I would be scared to walk into the place," Colacurcio said.

He said Bellevue had run the nude-dance industry out of town because City Council members "belong to the anti-pornography league. . . . Instead of doing what the people of Bellevue would choose to do, they only do what their own personal feelings are. I'm sure that if ever there was a vote in Bellevue on adult-entertainment clubs, the majority of people voting would vote for (adult entertainment)."

One member of the City Council, Margot Blacker, is on the advisory board of Washington Together Against Pornography, whose executive director, Andrea Vangor, helped to write the adult-cabaret ordinance.

Mayor Don Davidson said it was not the council's intention to run strip clubs out of town but to make sure they obey the law. "I find it fascinating that they're leaving," he said. "That's OK with me. I guess that's the nicest way to put it."