NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — On Wednesday, the owners of Legacy Lounge were in court facing off against the City of Norfolk, which shut them down.
The owners want a judicial injunction against the city, so they can re-open the doors of Legacy Lounge.
The attorney for Legacy says the problem is the city didn’t build a record of what was wrong before shutting down the nightclub.
Attorney Tim Anderson spoke to 10 On Your Side outside the Norfolk Courthouse after what was to be a one-hour hearing that turned into a three-hour hearing.
“The complaint was they didn’t have uniformed security, but they backed off that complaint pretty hard, and they went on to something else like they weren’t serving breakfast that wasn’t even discussed with city council.”
In court, it came out that the security plan in place to get the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to operate was not the security plan in place on August 5 when the shootings occurred.
“You have a minimum security plan the city agreed to. Then, we heard testimony zoning approved a greater security plan with a different company. They had a better security plan than the one they had with the city,” Anderson said.
But, does that give the city an in that Legacy Lounge was not in compliance with the original Conditional Use Permit?
“Yes, that could be an issue with the Conditional Use Permit, but they can raise that, and we can have a discussion on that,” said Anderson. “We have never discussed that. This was a good hearing to discuss a lot of issues.”
Also, Legacy Lounge owner Warren Salvodon could be seen in the video inside the lounge the night when chaos erupted.
“I think that is important. I can actually contest to what I have seen rather than a seven-second video clip can,” said Salvodon. “I can identify everything that night, and I don’t think they [the City Council] really cared to know what happened that night. They had a decision made before they gave me a chance to testify.”
Also, it has always been thought from the City Council meeting that the claim was Legacy Lounge did not have an adequate security detail, and that it was not properly uniformed. In court, Deputy City Attorney Adam Melita said something to the effect that they didn’t say that, only that there were no security guards in the video clips.
10 On Your Side followed Assistant City Attorney Katherine Taylor to ask her whether the Legacy owners have been treated properly by the city. We got a log of no comments.
Do you think they have a point where the City Council did not give them a fair hearing? Like bring in the owner who is there in the video and ask what was going on?
“No comment.”
Do you regret this case was handled this way?
“Again, no comment.”
And that the owners only had 20 minutes to tell their side of the story before the council.
“No comment.”
“The lack of security is why they shut them down, and they know they don’t have that point now as an arguable position,” Anderson said.
The judge could take two weeks to come up with a final decision to allow Legacy Lounge to continue operating pending the outcome of a trial that could take a year.