EDGE San Francisco

City officials and neighbors of San Francisco’s Trigger nightclub are expressing frustration with the bar’s owner as he works to pay off $50,000 in fines he accumulated because he wasn’t complying with conditions he agreed to in 2008.

Greg Bronstein, who owns Trigger, said he preferred not to talk about the penalties.

"It’s a fine we have, and we’re paying it off," Bronstein said. "It’s history. Right now, we’re making sure our operations are perfect."

Bronstein met with Supervisor Scott Wiener - whose District 8 includes Trigger, at 2344 Market Street - and other city officials, along with members of neighborhood groups, on January 19. Bronstein’s been given until mid-February to make changes.

The fines hit $50,000 by March 2011, after Bronstein was penalized $250 a day. On March 11, 2011, the planning department sent a letter to him and others stating that the agency had received complaints about the property since 2009.

According to the letter - headed "Administrative Penalty Reminder #3" - the bar was in violations of conditions agreed upon by Bronstein and club neighbors in June 2008. The stipulations in question mainly addressed containing noise, including bass and vibrations, within the building.

In 2008 Bronstein proposed, and the city’s Planning Commission approved, the expansion of Bronstein’s existing Jet bar into the adjacent first floor commercial space. The approved project also included a smoking patio.

The first enforcement notification appears to have been issued in November 2009 after planners received a complaint that conditions were being violated. The March 2011 notice, which the planning department provided to the Bay Area Reporter, indicates city officials and neighbors worked for several months to try to get the problems fixed.

In April 2010, the letter says, Bronstein submitted a plan for installing sound mitigation measures.

Kate Conner, the planning staffer assigned to Trigger at the time, wrote that the department was "supportive of the improvements," but "the amount of time that it has taken for compliance is excessive. The violation has been confirmed numerous times by Entertainment Commission staff."

Conner added, "Planning staff continues to receive multiple complaints from the neighborhood stating that the noise associated with Trigger bar is [a] nuisance and that Trigger bar is unresponsive to their requests to adjust the music and bass levels."

In May 2010, the planning letter said, an Entertainment Commission staffer reported that sound level coming from the club had improved but noise from the smoking section "is still very high."

After a December 2010 Planning Commission hearing, the smoking patio had to be enclosed, but problems have persisted. Planner Adrian Putra said there are still issues with noise from outside crowds.

"Everybody’s losing patience with Trigger," said Christine Haw, a planning department code enforcement supervisor. However, she said that after the meeting with Wiener, "I’m really optimistic that this time we are going to get some compliance."

Haw said her agency’s instituted a six-month payment plan for the fines, and Bronstein began making payments in November. Haw said that if Bronstein doesn’t make good, the standard policy would be to turn collection of the money over to the city’s Bureau of Delinquent Revenue.

"They have significant authority," she said.

She said that at the meeting with Wiener on January 19, it was agreed that the club would be given 30 days to comply with its conditions of use.

Haw said that Bronstein agreed to hire a noise consultant, essentially to reduce the bass vibrations. Bronstein’s also pledged to work on crowd control, she said.

If the bar doesn’t comply with their conditions, Haw said the case would go to the department’s zoning administrator, and to Planning Director John Rahaim.

The department "would certainly consider taking this back to the Planning Commission," Haw said, although she said she didn’t have the authority to make such a recommendation. That panel could revoke Bronstein’s conditional use permit, and Trigger "cannot operate without a valid conditional use permit," she said.

No ’death penalty’

Wiener said that even before he took office in January 2011, he knew there were tensions between Trigger and some neighbors, and attempts at solutions. He said that last year, people indicated to him that they were going to go to the Planning Commission to try to get the club shut down.

"I asked them to hold off," he said, and he convened mediations.

Wiener said, "Frankly, when you’re talking about a death penalty kind of enforcement ... you want to be careful." He said that Trigger is a business that employs people and a "significant nightlife venue in the neighborhood."

"You don’t want to shut down a business unless you have no other options," he said.

Haw said that at one point, Bronstein went to the Board of Appeals to try to have the amount lowered. The panel rejected his bid, she said.

Bronstein confirmed that he’d appealed the fines, but in a Tuesday, January 31 interview, he said he wanted to discuss "the good things we’re doing. The fines are in the past."

He said that he’s added staff and retrained people, among other adjustments.

Bronstein also said, "We spent additional thousands of dollars on the inside doing additional soundproofing" work over the past three to six months. He said a consultant would be coming in to address noise.

Often, "the noise on the streets is not coming from my club," but from people passing by, Bronstein said. He said he and his staff "do everything we can" to keep customers’ and non-customers’ voices down.

He said he couldn’t say how much of the $50,000 he’d paid off but it’s "a substantial portion."

Neighbors have said things sometimes improve, only to get worse again, but Bronstein said, "I don�t believe that. I feel we’ve made consistent progress, and have been compliant."

When a reporter visited the club at about 12:30 a.m. Friday, January 27, it appeared to be one of the more mellow spots in the neighborhood.

Outside, a handful of people chatted, and no music could be heard coming from inside the club.

In the bar, several men who appeared to be Trigger staff quietly escorted outside a drunken patron who was having trouble standing. Outside, sitting on the sidewalk, he searched for a ticket so he could reclaim his jacket and said, "I’m not hurting myself. I’m not hurting anybody else. I’m a good person."

The bar personnel hushed passers-by who started yelling, and one staffer gently reminded people to use their "inside voices."

Follow-up planned

Alan Beach-Nelson, who can’t hear noise from Trigger at his home several blocks away, is the president of the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association and was at the meeting with Wiener.

"We’ve given them a month, so we’ll have a follow up meeting on February 16," Beach-Nelson said.

"I’d love for Trigger to thrive and be a good neighbor, but if they’re not going to be a good neighbor, I don’t think they should be in business," he said.

Carmine Giordano, 75, who’s lived on 16th Street - behind Trigger - for more than 30 years, said the club’s music can get "really loud" between midnight and 2 a.m., patrons are sometimes screaming, and there have been several fights.

Giordano said it sometimes gets better, but "at least once a week, you’re going to be having some trouble out there."

He said that one of the ways he’s sure that the problems are coming from Trigger is that the club has special parties on Tuesday nights, and those are the evenings when there will "definitely" be problems.

San Francisco Department of Emergency Management records provided by Patrick Crogan, another Trigger neighbor, show there have been more than 60 calls for service at the club’s address since January 2011. The calls included noise complaints, assaults, and fights, among other problems.

Neighbors aren’t the only people who are frustrated with Trigger.

Jocelyn Kane, executive director of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission, said, "We’ve spent a lot of resources on this problem, and we don’t have any more to spend, and we can’t find a solution."

Kane said that if she felt there were adequate grounds for her commission to pull Trigger’s entertainment permit, "we would have done that," but they’re working with Wiener’s office "to try again."

Liquor license

The liquor license for the Trigger space is set to expire February 29, 2012, according to data from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The license shows that the state Board of Equalization placed a hold on the license in April 2008 - when the space was still Jet - indicating that there were tax problems. The California Employment Development Department put a hold on the license in March 2011.

In an email, ABC spokesman John Carr said the location had no disciplinary history and no violations. He said he couldn’t comment on the holds from the other agencies.

Yian-Chian Saetern, a BOE spokeswoman, declined to comment on Trigger.

EDD Spokeswoman Patti Roberts said in an email, "Specific employer tax information" maintained by her agency is confidential. However, she said, the department is authorized to request from the state alcohol agency "that a hold be placed on certain types of liquor licenses if liability is owed to EDD."

She added, "A hold establishes a priority to any monies received from the sale of the liquor license and prevents the transfer of a liquor license from the seller to the buyer until the conditions of the hold have been met."

About 20 minutes into his interview with the B.A.R. this week, Bronstein said he had to end the conversation, but he said he’d take down questions regarding the liquor license and other issues and respond via email. He hadn’t done so by Wednesday morning, February 1.