Vegas-Style Strip Club Pitched For Mill River

The owner of a soon-to-close Mill River strip club is looking to open a ​“Las Vegas-style” entertainment complex just around the corner that will include a restaurant, a speakeasy-themed bar, and a live performance venue for comedians, magicians, and dancing topless women.

Peter Forchetti made that pitch Tuesday night at the Board of Zoning Appeals’s regular monthly meeting in the basement of 200 Orange St.

He said the new restaurant / bar / performance venue / strip club, to be located at 203 Wallace St. and called Planet Venus, would serve as a replacement for and improvement on his Scores strip club at 85 Saint John St.

The day before the hearing, Forchetti agreed to end a months-long legal battle with the Clock Shop Lofts developers and close up shop at that strip club so the developers can convert the larger former factory complex into 130 new affordable apartments and artist lofts.

“The vision that I have is to bring a Las Vegas-style club to New Haven,” Forchetti said about Planet Venus, ​“that incorporates a steakhouse restaurant, a nightclub lounge, DJs, singers, actors, comedians, all under one roof.”

“It’s not just going to be a traditional strip club,” the project’s attorney, Ken Rozich, told the commissioners. He said ​“exotic dancers” will certainly be a part of the ​“adult-themed” entertainment venue. But, he assured the board, ​“it’s not going to be the main focal point.”

The board referred Forchetti’s zoning relief applications and coastal site plan documents for the project to the City Plan Commission for a requisite administrative review. The BZA would then vote on the project’s zoning relief applications at next month’s meeting.

From ​“Scary” To ​“Country Club”

The specific zoning relief that Forchetti has applied for to make Planet Venus a reality includes a special exception to permit an adult cabaret with liquor service to operate between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. at the industrial location, as well as a variance to allow an adult cabaret to be located less than 1,500 feet from another existing strip club. The Catwalk at 325 East St. is currently located just 1,100 feet away from the proposed Wallace Street site.

Forchetti, Rozich, project architect Sam Gardner, project engineer James Dimeo, and several current Scores employees and customers all argued at Tuesday night’s hearing that Planet Venus would rehabilitate an existing derelict building; would add more pedestrian traffic, car traffic, lighting, and security personnel to a currently underused and unsafe street; and would create jobs and attract visitors to an adult-themed entertainment complex akin to what one might find in Las Vegas or Miami.

“This building is going to be 100 percent better than how it stands” today, Gardner said about the proposed lighting, landscaping, and design improvements to the vacant building.

“Right now, it’s just a creepy road and scary,” Forchetti said. ​“When it’s done, it’s gonna look like a country club.”

The proposed strip club won’t be near any ​“sensitive uses” like schools or churches, Rozich said.

It will be just 630 feet away from Jocelyn Square Park, he admitted, but that’s still significantly farther than the 150 feet minimum separation of strip clubs from ​“sensitive uses” required by city law.

As for the 1,500-foot minimum distance from other existing strip clubs, Rozich noted that the law applies to adult cabarets that serve booze, and Catwalk doesn’t have a bar.

Furthermore, he said, Scores currently operates in the neighborhood. Tthe only reason Forchetti is pushing to open Planet Venus now is because his other business, Scores, got kicked out by apartment developers.

“We’re not asking you to allow us to do anything tomorrow that we couldn’t do yesterday and that we can’t do today,” Rozich said.

The City Plan Department Advisory Report on the special exception and variance applications recommends denial for both.

“Staff finds that the argument made by the applicant in regard to hardship is invalid,” the advisory report reads, ​“in that the use is allowed by Special Exception when located 1,500 ft or more from existing businesses of the same use. This could be established by simply finding a location within the city (there are 4 different zoning districts where this is permitted) that exceeds this 1,500 ft threshold.

“The intent of this distance requirement is to ensure that these types of uses are not grouped together in one area but rather to have them located in varying locations and therefore staff feels this use could be reasonably located elsewhere without the need for relief.”

When newly elected BZA Chair Mildred Melendez invited members of the public to share their opinions on the project, five people came to the front of the room to speak. All five spoke in favor of Planet Venus.

Local attorney Anthony DiCrosta, who represented Forchetti in the nine-month-long Scores eviction lawsuit, described Forchetti as one of the hardest working people he knows. He praised him for hiring off-duty city police officers to provide security at Scores, and for pledging to do so at Planet Venus as well. He said Forchetti prioritizes creating a safe, clean, and professional environment for both dancers and customers at his current business. (In 2013, when Scores was called Key Club and before Forchetti became the club’s primary owner, a shootout at the strip club left one dead and five injured.)

“It’s sort of like representing a Southern Italian family,” he said about how close-knit the Scores owners and staff are.

Local attorney Ben Trachten also voiced his support for the project, noting that the Independent had initially incorrectly stated (and later corrected) in this article that he opposed it. ​“I fully support these applications,” Trachten said.

Scores employee Monique also spoke out in favor of Planet Venus. She said she has worked at Scores for five years, and she’s convinced that Project Venus will only enliven in the best possible way a currently vacant stretch of the neighborhood.

“What he wants to do is bring fun back to the city,” she said about Forchetti.

Customer’s Take: ​“Easy Jobs” At Stake

Jeff Oates, who described himself as a frequent customer at Scores, said Project Venus will not only result in a significant capital investment by Forchetti into a rundown building. It will also provide more employment opportunities in town that don’t require a college degree.

“We talk about how we need jobs in New Haven,” he said. “[Scores] provides jobs currently. If it’s not allowed to reopen in another location, it will eliminate a flexible and an easy job for a lot of people.”

Beyond one question about lighting and safety, the BZA commissioners didn’t ask Forchetti and his team anything about the applications. BZA commissioner Shirl Wilkins did excuse herself from next month’s vote because, through her work at the Orange Board of Education, she knows the Forchetti family, who live in Orange.