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Well, the SF was just recently raided...here's a huge article on it...interesting stuff...
Club's Owner and 2 Others Arrested in Raid
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 8, 2004
he owner and two top executives of a popular Hell's Kitchen dance club were arrested yesterday in an early-morning raid at the club, which the authorities said was being run as a "stash house" where the use and sale of @#$% were rampant.
In a news conference yesterday afternoon, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, David N. Kelley, said that overdoses by patrons of the club, Sound Factory, on 46th Street near 12th Avenue, were commonplace and often concealed by management. Mr. Kelley said the club operated what amounted to a makeshift intensive care unit, a room known as crack alley, where bouncers tried to revive clubgoers who had overdosed, to avoid calling 911.
Two people have suffered fatal overdoses at the club since 2000, Mr. Kelley said. He would not release their names.
"Sound Factory drew many customers who came to the club because they perceived that they would be readily able to obtain illegal @#$% there," said a five-count federal indictment of the club's owner, Richard Grant; its director of security, Ronald Coffiel; and Randell Rogiers, who also worked in security. "Patrons often became so intoxicated on narcotics that they simply collapsed while dancing."
On one occasion, the indictment said, police officers intercepted two bouncers dropping an overdosing patron near a Dumpster.
Mr. Kelley said that undercover officers reported making 90 separate purchases of @#$%, including cocaine, marijuana and so-called club @#$% like crystal methamphetamine and @#$%, inside Sound Factory between May 2001 and last month.
"The owners and managers of Sound Factory chose dollars over decency," Mr. Kelley said.
The accused face up to 20 years in prison on each of the five counts against them if convicted.
Mr. Grant, Mr. Coffiel and Mr. Rogiers were to be arraigned today in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
"This is a big issue for us," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, whose undercover officers participated in the @#$% buys and in yesterday's raid, said at the news conference. "The whole club scene is generally one we want to encourage in the city, but they have to be run legally."
Sound Factory, one of the city's most popular big-box dance clubs, has grossed more than $6 million a year from entrance fees alone, which run from $30 to $50 a person depending on the night, the authorities said.
A cavernous spot popular for its after-hours "parties,'' the club usually has drawn 3,000 to 6,000 revelers, most arriving around 4 a.m. and not leaving until the next afternoon, law enforcement officials said. They said that on any given night, 70 percent of the club's clientele were high on @#$%.
Mr. Kelley called the case against Sound Factory "unique, unusual and serious." Although clubs known for @#$% use and other illegal activity have not escaped the attention of law enforcement in recent years - Sound Factory, in particular, has been under surveillance for some time - officials said that yesterday was the first time the "stash house" charge, which is more often used against operators of crack cocaine dens, was used against a club.
In a statement included in the news release about the arrests, Mr. Kelley drew a connection between neighborhood pushers and club owners who allow @#$% use. "Club owners and managers who allow their premises to become dangerous @#$% markets are no different from those who run crack houses,'' he said, "and they will be prosecuted as such."
The indictment also seeks forfeiture of ownership interest in the club as well as $18 million.
Despite the arrests and a continuing investigation, Mr. Kelley said, the authorities did not have the legal right to close the club yesterday.
Vasile Comeasu, a worker at a 24-hour car wash at 46th Street and 12th Avenue, near Sound Factory, said the club made little difference to him. "They never bothered us," he said. "Every now and then in the winter you might see someone high without a shirt on, but they didn't come over here much."
In April 1999 and February 2003, the city filed court actions against Sound Factory and other clubs, calling them a public nuisance and seeking to have them closed.
In response, Mr. Grant and Sound Factory managers gave sworn statements about their efforts to keep @#$% users out of the club. They said they had increased the number, and training, of security staff members, and they declared their increased vigilance "successful," according to the indictment. Mr. Grant and Mr. Coffiel succeeded in defeating the effort to close Sound Factory. But federal prosecutors say the security program they touted "was a sham designed to stave off" the authorities. For instance, Mr. Grant was directed to keep a @#$%-sniffing dog in the club as one of the court-ordered terms of continuing operation.
However, Police Commissioner Kelly said that when police officers entered the club over the weekend, "the dog was asleep."
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Dave Toole - [email protected]
Spundae Productions (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, Las Vegas)
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Sound Factory just closed and now Black formerly Exit
