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The kickoff party for Naked City Gallery in Old Town last fall was a big night for owner Carrie Follis, but not in the way she thought it would be.
"We had a lot of people here, including my parents."
A patrol officer for that area also stopped by because he knew she had live music at the event but didn't have a license.
"How was I supposed to know?" Follis said. "I'm not a bar, and so I didn't even think to go out and look for something like that."
It didn't matter.
"I was arrested. I went to court. I now have a misdemeanor on my record for it."
Follis is now part of group of art gallery and coffeehouse owners working with the city to revise its ordinance governing entertainment establishments.
"We're taking steps to modify it, which I think makes perfectly good sense," said City Council member Janet Miller.
The law says that any business with live music regularly must pay $400 annually for an entertainment license.
Miller said the law is meant to regulate bars and clubs that sell alcohol.
"You know, the police don't usually get called to coffeehouses," she said.
Miller and Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz are heading the city's effort to revise the law.
Stolz said the city revised its entertainment licensing in 2009.
"We were trying to ramp up some rules to enhance safety around (bars and clubs)," he said.
"What we failed to realize is there's an art district out there."
He said that while it might not be a big deal for a business that makes money from alcohol to pay $400 for an entertainment license, it can be a huge hurdle for others.
"You can't have a cookie-cutter ordinance," he said.
This spring, Stolz had detectives conduct surveys at 14 art venues and coffeehouses to gather information to help shape a revised ordinance.
"We're going to restructure the fees and make it to where places like that can do business in this city," he said. "I'm hoping within the next four to six weeks this will be in front of the council."
'Another way'
Concert promoter Adam Hartke says he appreciates the city's efforts, but he wonders whether there should be any fees for live music.
"I still think that there could be another way to approach that," he said.
Hartke, who also is operations and promotions manager at the Orpheum Theatre, said he researched 15 cities and found only one that required such a license.
He also researched Wichita's law.
"I tracked it all the way back to 1890," Hartke said. The City Council back then "wanted to be more of a metro city instead of a wild cow town."
He said the city created laws that made it illegal to have music, gambling, liquor or dancing without a license.
"Really, what we're seeing now are the remnants of that," Hartke said. "It seemed to be spilling over into venues that had no disturbance issues at all."
Hartke took the lead on getting the law changed after an incident at the Riverside Perk, where he said a teenage barista was questioned by several police officers investigating a noise complaint and they discovered the Perk's entertainment license had lapsed.
"It was just a really dramatic situation for this girl and her parents and really everybody in there," Hartke said. "At that point I started really questioning what this was about and kind of the philosophy behind it."
Clif Major and Kathy Roush Major's situation was so dramatic, they lost their C. Major's Rockin' Daddy's business over licensing.
Police went to the business near Douglas and Hillside late last year to investigate a possible liquor violation. Roush Major said her husband was cleared on that but was cited for not having an entertainment license, which she said was held up with red tape.
"I told him to wear it like a badge," she said. "What other guitar player in this region has received a misdemeanor for playing guitar?"
She began investigating the law.
"We don't fit into (a) category with anybody else," Roush Major said. "We're the only ones who closed because we had no sidelines to carry us through."
She discovered their previous business is zoned for residential, too, so they now have the Uptown Conservatory of Music At Clif and Kathy's Abode there.
They have occasional music along with music classes, but no alcohol is allowed.
It's something of a special fix for their situation, but the city still wants to help all the other businesses that don't fall into the typical bar or club category.
"We're wanting to encourage arts and culture and music and retain young people, and this coffeehouse music scene is a piece of that," Miller said. "If we've got an ordinance on the books that actually discourages that, it doesn't make any sense."
Hartke said the issue is "how we are actually going to embrace it rather than punish and almost criminalize it in some instances."
Follis, of the Naked City Gallery, said everyone agrees that something needs to be done.
"I'm really confident that they're going to represent all of us really well, and we're going to come to a good resolution on it," she said.
"I was really happy to see that because it was a little frightening," she said of her arrest and going to court.
"If all of this good stuff comes out of it, it will all be worth it. It really will be."
