From ‘a pearl’ to a chain on the door. Richland sheriff closes first club with new law
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott held a heavy gold chain and padlock as he walked toward the doors of Club LaRoice.
More than chaining the doors of what he described as a blight in Northeast Columbia, Lott said closing the club meant a change in the community and a historic moment for county law enforcement.
“What’s sad is it used to be a nice place,” Lott said. “The community was proud of it. They’re not proud of it anymore.”
For the first time, Lott used a new law to shutter Club LaRoice on Carrie Anderson Road. The law, passed by Richland County Council in April, allows the sheriff’s department to close businesses it determines to be nuisances. No Richland sheriff has ever had that power, Lott said.
The owner can appeal to County Council to have the club reopen.
Shootings, robberies, fights and other incidents sent deputies to Club LaRoice 39 times since July 2018, Lott said. Incidents at the club are under reported, said Lott, claiming that’s an attempt to hide other violence. At times, the club illegally operated as a strip club, the sheriff said.
After meeting with the club’s owner, Lott said promises of change never came to fruition. Since June 7, deputies have investigated three reports of shots fired. Early Saturday morning, a man was shot while he sat in his car in the club’s parking lot.
“That was the last straw,” Lott said. “LaRoice has been nothing but a nuisance. The families that reside near it live in constant fear. They are tired of it. I’m tired of it.”
Lott remembered when the club was a beacon in the northeast Columbia community off Hardscrabble Road near the Washington Heights neighborhood.
Club LaRoice opened around 2010, according to its social media account. But for decades the building was the home of the Townsmen Club, a private fraternal organization that opened it doors to community functions, Lott said. Barbecues and fried fish dinners as well as weddings, family reunions and anniversary parties brought people into the Townsmen Club when its members weren’t enjoying the hall for themselves with camaraderie and spirits made more for friendship than profit.
One longtime community resident and mechanic, who lives off a driveway that connects his home the club, said he remembered when the Townsmen founded their hall more than 50 years ago. The land the club was built on belonged to his family before they sold it to the club’s founder, he said. It was a nice place in its day.
Other community members who live near the club said in it’s heyday, the Townsmen Club was a place that served the community.
Lott called the former club “a pearl.”
County records show the club was built in 1965, and by the 1980s it was premier enough to make Jet Magazine’s society pages in the publication’s “Cocktail Chitchat” section. The 50th wedding anniversary and vows ceremony of Margaret and Roland Harris Sr. graced the pages of Jet.
“More than 100 guests and three generation of the Harris family from New York, New Jersey and Baltimore were present to mark the occasion,” Jet wrote in 1981 about the party at The Townsmen Club.
A similar write-up about a party at the Club got into a 1984 Jet issue that featured Mr. T on the cover. Mr. T was not at the party.
The parties had fallen a long way from those days as the Townsmen, Lott said. The sheriff talked with the owner, Jurrell Green, who showed up just before Lott chained the doors. Green’s father, Leroy Green, was the former owner of the Townsmen.
“We talked about how his father turned over in his grave with what this place turned into,” Lott said. “Getting shot, getting robbed — that’s not having a good time.”
Green, the current owner, declined to comment on the record after the news conference.
Lott said he’d be exercising his new power to close places elsewhere, calling out Mi Casita, a club on Decker Boulevard that’s had a number of shootings and one person killed. Saturday, another shooting happened outside Mi Casita, deputies said. Mi Casita couldn’t be reached for comment.
While the community might be against Club LaRoice as Lott said, at least one former patron will miss the place. John Dans stood just beyond the parking lot as Lott locked up LaRoice.
“I love the place,” Dans said.
When asked why he loved it, Dans said when it was a strip club, what wasn’t to love.
This story was originally published July 25, 2019 at 6:17 PM.