Neighbors seek to close second Five Points bar

Residents of neighborhoods surrounding Five Points, who earlier this month successfully blocked the liquor license of the Five Points Roost bar, are challenging a second bar.

The dozen or so neighbors are opposing a permanent liquor license for Rooftop Bar, which is ostensibly owned by the same people as the Roost and operated in the same way.

Rooftop is operating under a one-year, temporary license, as was the Roost.

“Rooftop’s application should fail because (it) is not engaged primarily and substantially in the preparation and serving of meals … and failed to disclose all principals as required,” the residents' attorney, Dick Harpootlian, said in his challenge to the license.

Harpootlian is asking for a summary judgment against Rooftop based on the denial of the Roost's license. Under a summary judgment, the judge would not hold a hearing and would rule based on information presented in the Roost's case.

For now, a hearing in the Rooftop case is set for May 14.

Mike Montgomery, attorney for owners Adam Ruonala and Stephen Bland, has asked the judge to reconsider the Roost's decision and to throw out the motion for summary judgment in the Rooftop Bar case.

“The motion for summary judgment is not in order, according to the rules,” he said. “And there are material questions of fact that the court would have to decide.”

The decision whether the Roost and Rooftop can have a license has ramifications statewide. Issues decided in those two cases, including what defines a bar and the required ratio of food-to-alcohol sales, could affect hundreds of bars across the Palmetto State.

The neighbors claim that the listed owners, Ruonala and Bland, are a front for the former owner of the Pour House, a late-night college bar that once operated in the Roost location at the corner of Harden and Greene streets. The Pour House had a long list of violations, and its owner, Dan Wells, was arrested for allegedly choking 22-year-old USC student Ryan Chisolm on St. Patrick's Day weekend last year and dropping him to the ground outside of the bar’s front door, breaking his jaw.

Wells, who is facing assault and battery charges, voluntarily closed the Pour House under pressure from Columbia police.

On April 3, S.C. administrative law judge Deborah Durden ruled that the state should not extend the liquor license for the Roost in part because Ruonala and Bland did not disclose that Wells was an undisclosed co-owner of the business.

The neighbors are led by University Hill residents April Lucas and Tom Gottshall, both attorneys.

“The ownership structure (for Rooftop) is nearly identical (to the Roost),” Lucas said. “All the same players are involved."

Neighbors around Five Points and several Five Points merchants claim that the urban village near the University of South Carolina is "out of balance." They say there are too many bars like the Roost and Rooftop bar that don't open until 9 or 10 p.m. and have licenses to stay open past the normal 2 a.m. closing time.

They claim the 16 or so late-night college bars cater to many underage USC students using fake IDs and make their money selling as much liquor as cheaply as possible. The result is crowds of drunken, unruly students overflowing into their neighborhoods late at night.

In addition to challenging individual licenses, the neighbors are pressuring Columbia City Council to make it more difficult to get a late-night permit.

"The goal is to lessen this (unruly) behavior ... by decreasing the density of bars and the hours the bars remain open," said Gottshall, president of the University Hill Neighborhood association. "In our view, the late-night permit system has failed as an experiment. It’s not the whole answer. It's part of the answer."

This story was originally published April 19, 2018 at 8:46 AM with the headline "Neighbors seek to close second Five Points bar."