Moorhead City Council

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

The Classic Touch Lounge received the conditional use permit allowing it to continue operations from the Moorhead City Council at its regular meeting Monday – along with an appended list of detailed requirements to calm concerns of its residential neighbors.

The nightclub, which opened in early February, has been the target of residents in the neighboring Moorhead Manor Mobile Home Park and other housing to the south and west. During its first two weekends, noise from the club generated two police complaints. A month later, a gun was discharged near the club by patrons who had left its parking lot.

Classic Touch occupies the longtime site of Jerry’s Supper Club and other liquor establishments dating back to the 1930s. The once-rural businesses were permitted under Clay County zoning rules, even as housing developments grew up around the corner of 11th Street and 15th Avenue North. Mayor Shelly Carlson explained that after the area was annexed into the city, county zoning rules were grandfathered in until the facility had stood unoccupied for more than a year. Then city rules came into play – the confusing situation that led to the present requirement for the conditional use permit.

“This has been a rabbit hole – a terrible rabbit hole,” resident Mark Altenburg told the council. “The owners didn’t do anything wrong. Yet now they can’t do what a normal business does under the license they were legally issued. They’re great people, and their business will be an asset to the neighborhood.”

The partners in Classic Touch, Kaluah Smith and Gerald Bailey, were issued a liquor license before the zoning issue had been sorted out. The Moorhead Planning Commission approved the conditional use permit now required under city zoning rules on March 6, recommending its passage by the council. The discussion was tabled at the previous meeting March 13 after sometimes-heated discussion of citizen complaints about noise and parking. That night, Smith reported that neighbors’ noise concerns were already being addressed.

In the meantime, Huston reported, the owners held a public meeting with neighbors and members of both the council and city planning commission, as had been suggested March 13. Smith said they have begun work on another suggested requirement, a formal security plan.

The resolution submitted by the planning commission Monday included that security plan, which would note steps to prevent underage drinking and loitering in the parking lot more than 10 minutes after leaving the building. Council member Larry Seljevold expressed concern about those measures, saying the same issues are faced by all bars, yet no other has been required to submit such a plan. 

“I’m in favor of treating this one like any other,” he said.

City attorney John Shockley indicated that the need for a security plan may be added to liquor licensing requirements in the coming year.

Council member Deb White moved to remove the security plan from the conditional use permit. Her motion failed, opposed by members Ryan Nelson, Matt Gilbertson, Laura Caroon and Chuck Hendrickson; Mayor Shelly Carlson also voted no, breaking the tie. The group went on to unanimously approve the conditional use permit as submitted by the planning commission with only one amendment suggested by member Steve Lindaas – changing the requirement of closure by 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays to 2 a.m. through the end of May.

One of the conditions to the permit is that a person standing at the edge of the property must not be able to hear noise from inside the club. Other conditions of the approved permit include closure by midnight Sundays through Thursdays; maximum occupancy of 300; doors and windows to remain closed to minimize noise; no outdoor seating; and erection of a “solid, opaque 7-foot-high screening fence” along the eastern property line that “shall be limited to no more than two colors, have no designs or advertising on it, and shall be attractive in nature.”