Violent brawl spurs neighbors to push to renew Group Therapy liquor license showdown
Some neighbors of the Five Points urban village near the University of South Carolina want to reopen a hearing challenging the liquor license of the iconic Five Points bar Group Therapy. And they want to add to their case a recent brawl that took place at the bar in the wee hours of the morning.
The neighbors, along with the University of South Carolina and the Columbia Police Department, say the bar, now owned by Gamecock football legend Steve Taneyhill, should be denied a license renewal because of frequent police calls to the bar — 38 times in a one-year period — and general rowdiness that allegedly occurs around it.
The disturbances there and in other parts of Five Points are mostly caused by the throngs of college students who descend on the area on the weekends, they say.
A two-day hearing on the Group Therapy license was adjourned by S.C. Administrative Law Judge Shirley Robinson on Feb. 12. Robinson said she could offer a decision on the license within 30 days.
Now, Chris Kenney, an attorney with the law firm of crusading state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, which is representing the neighbors, wants to reopen testimony in the case after a brawl that allegedly occurred at the Greene Street bar Feb. 29.
Video shows a wide-ranging free-for-all fight among a dozen or more people that allegedly began in the bar, spread into Greene Street and then burst back into the bar. The video of the fight does not indicate whether the people involved were college students.
The Group Therapy challenge is the latest by University Hill and Wales Garden neighborhood residents who say drunken, rowdy students, many underaged, are trashing their yards, endangering themselves and others and causing mayhem, generally.
However, Group Therapy, which opened in 1978, has always appealed to a wide range of patrons of all ages and stations of life.
Beyond Group Therapy, the neighbors blame a dozen or so college-oriented bars, which generally open only at night, cater to USC students and advertise and serve the cheapest booze, called “the race to the bottom” in the hospitality industry.
Kenney on Friday entered a motion to reopen the case based on depositions of two State Law Enforcement Division agents who were in the bar when the fight occurred.
According to the motion:
SLED agent Kirkland Jordan, who was on patrol in Five Points near the fountain, responded to a fight in the middle of Greene Street at l:44 a.m. Feb. 29.
Several groups of individuals were fighting while Group Therapy’s manager, Fabian Ludwig, tried to break it up.
Some of the combatants pushed their way inside Group Therapy, and Jordan and other SLED agents followed.
While agents tried to break up a fight taking place next to the bar, someone shouted that shots were fired outside the bar, causing Jordan and the other SLED agents to leave Group Therapy to check out the gunfire at the nearby corner of Greene Street and Pavillion Avenue.
A witness said the shots were fired from a black Nissan.
By the time agents returned to the bar, the people who allegedly had been firing had fled.
Ludwig, the bar manager, told SLED agent Jordan the fight started inside Group Therapy, the combatants were kicked out and then proceeded to fight in the street.
The motion says Jordan and her colleague James Tallon III both recorded body camera footage of the incident. The footage and the agents’ testimony should be entered into the case against Group Therapy’s liquor license renewal, it says.
Kenney, in the motion, called the evidence “competent” and “prohibitive” in asking for the case to be reopened.
The State has reached out to Taneyhill’s attorney Bakari Sellers.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:51 PM.