Diva’s eyes bikini bar business Faced with deadline, nightspot owner applies for liquor license

BANGOR – For the owners of the city’s only strip club, it’s time to put on the tops and turn on the taps.

Faced with a June 1 deadline to stop topless dancing at the club or move out of the downtown, Diva’s owner Diane Cormier-Youngs has applied to the city for a liquor license in hopes of converting the “gentlemen’s club” into a bikini lounge.

“You can go to the beach and see bikinis, so why can’t you come here and see them?” Cormier-Youngs asked Tuesday, explaining her plan to feature dancers in bikinis instead of topless. “It’s not hurting anybody.”

The City Council is expected to consider the club owner’s liquor license application at its May 30 meeting.

Mayor John Rohman on Tuesday said that if Cormier-Youngs’ establishment meets all the criteria, he saw no reason to oppose the application to serve alcohol.

“I’ll vote for it,” said Rohman, adding that he already had taken one telephone call from a constituent who opposed letting Diva’s stay in the downtown. “As I explained to [the caller], this is a whole different issue. If it meets the requirements for a bar and she hasn’t had any other issues with her other business, I would be very surprised if it was denied.”

Bangor Police Chief Donald Winslow said Tuesday that his officers were called to Cormier-Youngs’ former bar, Club Chaos, just three times during the six months it was open on Hammond Street.

“If she’s willing to work with us, it should be no problem,” Winslow said of Cormier-Youngs’ effort to convert the strip club, which cannot serve alcohol, to a bikini bar.

But if Diva’s history with the City Council is any indication, efforts to keep the club downtown – in any form – is likely to run into opposition.

In 1998, the council, reacting to a number of public concerns including those of the neighboring All Souls Congregational Church, passed a slate of ordinances regulating commercial nudity. In addition to banning alcohol and full nudity from such establishments, new zoning requirements relegated exotic dancing to the high-priced land near the Bangor Mall as well as remote commercial sections of Hammond and Union streets.

In recent weeks, Cormier-Youngs unsuccessfully asked the council to reconsider its decision and allow her to stay in the downtown.

Cormier-Youngs said that denial, coupled with recent failed attempts to enlist legal help of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, gave her little choice but to turn the business into a bar if she wanted to stay on State Street.

Cormier-Youngs said the MCLU, in its May 15 decision to stay out of the case, cited a signed agreement with the city in which the club owner agreed not to pursue any legal appeals of its ordinance.