Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Strip club hit with $15K fine for COVID-19 violations
Playhouse 2, other businesses shut down for violations
These partygoers lived it up as if there was no pandemic, filling up a strip club to celebrate late into the night, officials say.
But the party came to a halt when code enforcers forced the Playhouse 2 Gentlemen’s Club to shut down. The code enforcers slapped the strip club with a $15,000 fine for the revelry Tuesday night.
“It was elbow to elbow,” Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner said of the concern of having a COVID cluster. “That’s where you get an explosion of cases in one night.”
The shutdown is among dozens of closures that have resulted from local governments’ rising enforcement of COVID-19 rules. The goal: to stop big bashes and curtail other late-night social gatherings as coronavirus cases continue to surge across Florida. Local governments have beefed up their enforcement and started keeping close watch over restaurants, strip clubs and other businesses.
Palm Beach County’s compliance team, which includes sheriff’s deputies, city police officers, fire rescue personnel and county staff members, had issued 52 written warnings, seven notices of violation and 24 business closures as of Friday afternoon. The code enforcement staff perform daily inspections and are out at restaurants on a near-nightly basis.
Playhouse 2 Gentlemen’s Club in West Palm Beach, which previously was given warnings, was slapped with the sizable fine and shut down after officers found the establishment full of maskless patrons crammed together with no signs of social distancing, Kerner said.
“We fined them $15,000 and then we’ll fine them again if they don’t [follow the rules],” Kerner said.
Palm Beach County did not provide additional details about the violations. Attempts to reach a representative for Playhouse 2 Gentlemen’s Club were unsuccessful.
In Broward County, officials plan to have more code enforcement officers who will fan out into cities and find violations.
Orders remain in place that require masks in public places, shut down restaurants after midnight for onsite dining, and prohibit large gatherings. Cities have asked the county for help enforcing the rules, so officials on Friday continued talks to hire more code enforcement officers. New contracts are expected to add about 20 code enforcers.
The money to pay for the new, temporary code officers will come from Broward County’s $340.7 million cut in federal aid in the fight against the COVID-19 crisis. The money has to be spent by Dec. 31.
Comprising about 50 members, Palm Beach County’s COVID-19 Education Compliance Team is tasked with enforcing social distancing guidelines and, most recently, making sure restaurants abide by a new 11 p.m. shutdown order.
“Much of the focus at the beginning of this endeavor was education, education, education,” Kerner said at a news conference Friday. “We felt as time went on, the community and business community in particular have been abundantly educated on what their rights and responsibilities are under our order. There comes a time when we start to transition to enforcement.”
Palm Beach County’s initial order for earlier restaurant closings was set up on July 14, but the compliance team quickly discovered many eateries disregarding the order. The county refined the order on July 23, instituting a stricter mandate that eliminated any gray areas where restaurants could remain open past 11 p.m.
“Having the broad authority to just shut places down at 11 has been a useful and effective tool,” Kerner said. “I think where we’re starting to see the most trouble is at restaurants/ bars that are more of a social bar setting that is used to being open until 3 or 4 in the morning.”
Assistant County Administrator Pat Rutter, who helps coordinate the team, said high-traffic areas such as Delray Beach’s Atlantic Avenue and West Palm Beach’s Clematis Street have largely complied with the emergency orders. Rutter said individual bars apart from thriving hubs have been more of an issue.
“We can’t be everywhere in one night. But certainly as you look at the highertraffic areas, it seems pretty darn good with shutdowns at 11 o’clock,” Rutter said. “It’s been very quiet at those times.
“It’s when we get a little bit deeper into the neighborhood bars/corner bar that’s in a shopping center kind of thing, more of the one-off type places — we’re finding those are not totally in conformance and that’s where we’re following through with them.
“But I think the response has been overall pretty good to the hard 11 o’clock shutdown.”