Bachman/Northwest Highway Community Association

BACHMAN Gets Short - Changed !!!

City Officials Get Big Bucks !!!

The thorough investigation of a high-ranking police commander inappropriately agreeing to ease enforcement of Northwest topless clubs in the early 1990s doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, except maybe in circles. Those of us who have worked in Bachman for very long know that Lt. John Sullivan is an officer with integrity. If you listened closely to the news and read carefully in the paper, you know that he was told to ease enforcement of Caligula XXI because it was placed under S.A.F.E. Team Investigation.

We would like to know if there truly was a S.A.F.E. Team Investigation, and if so, what were their findings? Caligula was never abated, or even closed - well, not until it burned last November. Are Police Lieutenants usually called to City Hall to tell them a business is under abatement investigation?

So what does all this mean to us? PLENTY! When the Police Department quit routinely checking the topless clubs, Code Compliance, the Fire Department, and the Health Department also quit. Why? We were told it is because all departments generally inspect at the same time. Clubs and bars are usually inspected at night. To the best of our knowledge, the topless clubs in Bachman haven’t been inspected for over seven years!

So someone (or several people) took money under the table in 1992-1993. That’s history. We can’t change that. We don’t know if the pay-offs continued or not, but for sure enforcement has continued to be non-existent, whether intentionally or just due to oversight. Whatever the reason, we must now correct the situation. Allowed to go unchecked, most any business will develop improprieties, to say the least, and especially businesses of this caliber.


So now we wonder how many Health, Code, Fire and Vice violations we have going on in our neighborhood, not to mention the alcohol level of patrons leaving these establishments, one of which has the largest alcoholic beverage sales in the entire State of Texas every month (except some Decembers). We know illegal sex acts are occurring in at least one of these topless clubs.

Further, SEC. 41A-13 of Dallas City Code states that “(a) A person commits an offense if he operates or causes to be operated a sexually oriented business with 1,000 feet of: ... (3) a boundary of a residential or historic district as defined in this chapter”. “(b) A person commits an offense if he causes or permits the operation, establishment, substantial enlargement, or transfer of ownership or control of a sexually oriented business within 1,000 feet of another sexually oriented business.” “(c) A person commits an offense if he causes or permits the operation, establishment, or maintenance of more than one sexually oriented business in the same building, structure, or portion of a building or structure ...” SEC. 41A-14.2(b) states “A primary sign may have no more than two display surfaces. Each display surface must: (1) not contain any flashing lights; ... (3) not exceed 75 square feet in area; and (4) not exceed 10 feet in height or 10 feet in length.”

Every topless club in Bachman violates one or more of these City Ordinances. The club owners have filed lawsuits stating that the ordinances are unconstitutional, although the same ordinances have been upheld in other major cities. Why is Judge Buchmeyer taking so long to rule on this? Word has it that he was told that our City Attorney’s Office is working on a settlement. Several members of our City Council assure us that this isn’t the case. They agree that these sexually oriented businesses are a blight on our community and contribute to our hardship in acquiring new businesses (other than more SOBs and dance halls).

Without the topless clubs and the extensive number of dance halls/bars/taverns, Bachman has many attributes that are largely overlooked and often undernourished:

* we are centrally located in the City
* we are near Love Field
* we have a huge lake (scheduled to be dredged)
* we have parks with great community potential
* we have major highway renovations coming to Northwest Highway by the State of Texas Department of Transportation
* we have a land use study developed by the City of Dallas Dept of Planning & Development calling for extensive physical improvements along Northwest Highway from Denton Drive to Marsh Lane
* we have DART light rail coming, including a Rail Station
* we have a great Community Association working for free with all City Departments, area businesses, homeowners, and rental residents to help reduce crime and continuously improve quality of life, streets, schools, parks and economic growth to truly make Bachman the ‘Community of Choice’ for quality businesses and residents.

We need to continue working on all of the above attributes to fully develop them. In order to succeed, we need for the topless clubs to relocate somewhere else. In order to convince them to do so, we need for the City Ordinances to be upheld.

In the meantime, we need directives issued from the City Attorney’s Office to the Departments of Police, Fire, Health and Code, stating that routine inspections should immediately be resumed. Further, we need copies of these directives so that we, the taxpayers, can be reassured that the ‘dirty dealings’ have ended and to restore our confidence in City Officials and their management of our City, and specifically Bachman.