Fight over downtown strip club returning to City Hall
Common Council to vote Tuesday on issuing license
The fight over opening a strip club downtown is heading to the Milwaukee Common Council on Tuesday.
The vote, which follows years of legal battles over opening a strip club in the heart of the city, will come down to a majority of council members who are present and voting. That means the Executive Lounge Gentlemen’s Club proposed for 730 N. Old World 3rd St. would need to win the support of eight of 15 council members, or fewer if there are abstentions, to be granted a license.
The plan initially failed to pass the Licenses Committee on Monday, but chairman Tony Zielinski used a procedural move — making a motion to deny the license — to send it to the floor for a vote at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting.
Zielinski made it clear he plans to vote in favor of the strip club license Tuesday.
“I am supportive of this plan for a number of reasons. First off, I want to say this applicant has an extensive record and experience in this business. They have operated Silk, they’ve operated numerous strip clubs throughout the state of Wisconsin,” Zielinski said. “There’s a difference in the applicant. I voted against this in the past, and the primary reason why I voted against this in the past was the applicant . ... This is a totally different situation.”
The owners of the Executive Lounge would include a combination of strip club owners and operators who have previously applied to open clubs downtown. They include Joseph Modl, Scott Krahn and Craig Ploetz of Silk Exotic on W. Silver Spring Road in Milwaukee, and Radomir Buzdum of Silk Exotic in Middleton. The new group is named PPH Properties I LLC.
Ald. Robert Bauman was not convinced.
“That’s just wrong. That’s just plain inaccurate,” Bauman said. “It’s the same people. Every single time. It’s been a combination of the same people from day one. They move the players around.”
If the Common Council agrees to grant the Executive Lounge a license, the club owners would drop their lawsuits filed against the City of Milwaukee over past blocked efforts to open.
“It looks like they’re extorting a license in exchange for money,” Bauman said of the settlements. “It does look like we’re trading a license for a dismissal of lawsuits.”
Ald. Milele Coggs voiced frustration with the current license application. For example, Coggs noted she was told at last month’s committee meeting that armed security would be in front of the establishment, but a follow-up letter from Ploetz said the armed security would be “in a car, patrolling the block.”
“That is in contrast to what I directly and specifically asked,” Coggs said. “Your basic plan of operation doesn’t work together ... I’m bringing up the here and now. The basic questions I’m asking of how this place is going to be run ... it concerns me!”
Martha Love of the Human Trafficking Task Force of Greater Milwaukee has warned that “strip clubs are a gateway to human trafficking.”
But Ploetz, who would be the operations manager of the club, said the owners are committed to a “Club Operators Against Sex Trafficking” effort to combat the crime.
“As responsible club operators it’s our intent to become the vigilant ‘eyes and ears’ of the community against human sex trafficking,” he wrote.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn greeted the club owners’ new anti-trafficking plans with skepticism.
“I prefer not to get in the middle of this thing. All of my experience generally speaking is when a club advertises itself as adult or for gentlemen, it’s neither,” he said. “I would be troubled by the fact that somebody has to have a business plan in which they would even think they needed to watch out for human trafficking as part of their business plan. That should be a red flag.”