Although there is no connection between Shelia Brown and the previous owner of Good Hope's popular but troubled Taste Restaurant and Lounge, that wasn't enough for the Cape Girardeau City Council to grant a liquor license to Brown.

The council refused to allow Brown and her two business partners to reopen the bar at 402 Good Hope St. with a new name, new management and what she said would be renewed commitment to wiping out the Taste's embattled history.

The council Tuesday night voted 6-0 -- with Mayor Al Spradling III absent -- to deny Brown's liquor license request for a bar called Phoenix, which would operate under the umbrella of Modern Day Veterans 307.

"We're new owners, we should at least be given a chance," Brown said when reached at home after the council meeting. "We were going to have better security and a more mature crowd, stressing the age limit and carding everyone who walked in the door no matter how old they might look."

She said she will regroup with her partners, whom she would not name, and decide on the next course of action.

Brown did not attend the meeting, but 14 neighbors showed up to oppose the bar's reopening. She said she did not attend because she didn't want a confrontation with those who opposed the bar.

"I don't think we had a chance either way," she said. "I believe they already had their minds set up. They knew what they wanted to do, and nothing I had to say was going to change that."

Brown said the Taste is not to blame for conditions in the Good Hope area, and activity neighbors complained about -- drug dealing, prostitution, drinking and loitering -- all continued after the Taste closed.

"I passed by there a few days ago, and there were people drinking on the corner and the club was not even open," she said. "And police were passing by and letting them drink in broad daylight. Nothing has changed, so how can you blame it on the bar?"

But neighbors who spoke at the meeting told a different story, saying life has become almost peaceful since former Taste owner Michael Pryor's bar shut its doors.

"For the past two months, it has become quieter and there's less activity," said Kim Dodson, who lives at 300 Good Hope. "Before, when the bar was still open, I would use the word chaos. When the bar let out, there was so much whoopin' and hollerin'. I just want you to think seriously about your street and if three houses down there was a bar."

Quieter, says resident

Danna Cotner, who lives a few blocks away on South Lorimier, said noise levels were intolerable when the Taste was open. Some nights she got so agitated she would go out and stand in her back yard, she said.

"We could hear the thump, thump, thump of the bass," Cotner said. "When there was a disk jockey there, we could hear him talking."

Now that the bar has closed, Cotner said, fewer cars are cruising, less noise reverberates toward her house and they don't have to watch prostitutes being picked up and drug deals taking place.

"All of that has calmed down," she said

Council members seemed to agree.

"I am not satisfied that they would be able to run an orderly and legitimate business, regardless of who it was," said Councilman Hugh White. "No one could open a bar there and not experience problems that we put to rest two months ago."

Pryor operated the bar for 11 years. The Taste, which catered primarily to blacks, finally had to close its doors after its liquor license was not renewed in June. That was after a year of probationary licenses stemming from an incident in June 1999, when an altercation between a white patrolman and a black motorist resulted in a near riot in which several officers were pelted with bricks and debris and a number of arrests were made.

Councilman Tom Neumeyer said neighbors were put through "hell" the 11 years the Taste was open.

"It had become an infestation, a plague of pimps, drug dealers and hookers," he said. "I can't see putting the neighbors through hell again. There's no way that this will reopen again."

smoyers@semissourian.com

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