Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Adult nightclub adds flash to flesh with a $10 million renovation
Once you get past the men in tuxedos at the door, you can find patrons soaking in Jacuzzis as dancers nearby get naked. But that’s just the beginning.
In the works: Servers who zip down a chrome water slide to deliver drinks. Acrobats performing on a rooftop. An outdoor deck where patrons can be sprayed with foam.
Welcome to Solid Gold, a strip club with decades of South Florida history that has opened bigger than ever at its new home in Pompano Beach, the city with the largest number of gentlemen’s clubs in Broward.
And the emphasis is heavy on trying to show you something you’ve never seen.
“When they come in, they will say, ‘Wow,’ ” says club owner Michael J. Peter. “This is a step beyond — especially the Bubble Room.”
A $10 million renovation is underway at the property, 1350 SW Second St., which long has been used as a club. Once Solid Gold is complete, “it’s going to be a circus,” said Peter, 70.
Solid Gold lost a legal battle against city ordinances regulating strip clubs in Oakland Park, where it previously operated for decades.
That prompted Peter to close Solid Gold and a sister club next door, Pure Platinum. The poles and the lights of Pure Platinum were auctioned off last month, but Peter found a new home for Solid Gold in Pompano’s industrial zone.
On Thursday, the club was quiet early in the night as two women pranced on the runway, slowly peeling off their gowns to loud pop music. A few feet away, diners reveled at the sight of a waiter lighting a flambé.
With 22,000 square feet, a different scene awaits around every corner.
The first floor of Solid Gold, bathed in red neon, features crystal chandeliers, gold-leaf walls and leather booths. VIP members can get into a private parking lot and a private entrance with a special key fob.
Hit the knocker to one room three times and a locked door gives way to a “Red Room,” inspired by the bestselling novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Next to some alligator skin couches, a cabinet of bondage and discipline accessories — including a paddle — awaits.
Take an elevator to the second floor and you’ll see the Wet Lounge, where patrons jump into Jacuzzis. The walls are inlaid with different-sized mirrored balls, reflecting the scene in many ways. The entire floor is waterproof and bathed in blue light.
“Unlike most clubs, the people who come here are going to be encouraged to get wet,” said Mark Lowe, an associate who helped develop Peter’s vision.
Solid Gold plans acrobatics: a zip line with aerialist performers, but they aren’t there yet.
City records show it has pulled permits for a glass swimming pool. The club also plans to have a water slide that’ll be used by servers as they offer drinks. Dancers in body paint, flames on water and a machine that blows out steam will add to the spectacle, Peter said.
“It’s going to be something like this area has never seen,” Peter said.
Peter is doing it to stay competitive.
South Florida is considered one of the most competitive adult club markets in the country, according to ED Magazine, an industry publication. But most of it is concentrated in Miami. Fort Lauderdale and other cities have passed ordinances that keep adult clubs out.
All of Palm Beach County has a dozen clubs. City records in Pompano Beach show that Solid Gold is one of six spots in the city where sexually oriented entertainment lounges are allowed.
City Commissioner Barry Moss sees a silver lining to this kind of redevelopment.
“It really is tucked away in an industrial area that you wouldn’t know how to get to, unless you were looking for it,” Moss said. “For the kind of business that it is, it’s the best place it can be in.”
For Peter, Pompano Beach has special meaning: It’s the city where he started his first South Florida business decades ago.
He had Thee DollHouse, on Federal Highway and Sample Road, once in the city. It was featured in the 1987 Mötley Crüe video “Girls, Girls, Girls.”
In the adult entertainment industry, Peter is regarded as the person who turned gentlemen’s clubs into something respectable, said David Manack, associate publisher of ED Magazine.
If anyone can get the millennial generation to leave their homes and look up from their cellphones, it’s Peter, Manack said.
“In the ’70s, there weren’t clubs like we know them, they were biker bars that had dancers and the dancers were the bikers’ girlfriends — it was a rough industry,” he said.
Peter, who graduated from Cornell University, opened a DollHouse in Orlando and things were never the same, Manack said. He got away from the biker bar atmosphere, making it classier, and “you weren’t scared to go into a club anymore,” Manack said.
Solid Gold, about a halfmile from Interstate 95’s Atlantic Boulevard exit, had a soft opening in June in the industrial zone.
“This is a legal location, one of the very few that exists,” Peter said. “There will never be any headaches here.”
This club is “going to be my most lavish — and my last.”