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2011 —
The city's one documented club: In 2011 a private membership club named the Champagne Club opened in Fort Wayne — the opening date given in its business listings, and consistent with the statement, made in open council session eight years later, that it had then been open eight years. It was, and in the record reached remains, the only swingers club the city has had. Business listings place the Champagne Club on Nuttman Avenue on the southwest side — most give 2710 Nuttman Avenue, one gives 2750 — near the Foster Park golf course, the location WANE-TV gave its viewers in 2019. A conflicting listing, carried by Manta under a different telephone number, places a "Champagne Club" at 8208 Meadow Hills Drive on the north side; the two listings are printed here as the conflict they are, and the broadcast record supports the Nuttman Avenue address. The listings describe a members-only club open two nights a week, Friday and Saturday, in the evening hours.
A regional draw: What the club's own side put on the public record, through its attorney at the August 2019 council meeting, was its scale: just over 15,000 active members, only one-fifth of them from Fort Wayne, and a claimed five to ten million dollars a year brought into the local economy by members staying in city hotels and eating in city restaurants. Those are the club's figures, stated by its counsel in an advocacy setting, and they are printed as such — but their shape is the point the record supports independently: a membership club in an unmarked building on a side street drew most of its trade from outside the city, which is why most Fort Wayne residents first learned of it from the attempt to close it.
Sources:
- WANE-TV (WANE 15), broadcast reports of July 23 and August 13, 2019, as recorded in the station's FCC issues report for the third quarter of 2019 — location near Foster Park Golf Course, the eight years, the membership and economic figures as stated by the club's attorney.
- Business listings for The Champagne Club — chamberofcommerce.com and Cylex (2710 Nuttman Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46802); Restaurantji (2750 Nuttman Avenue; Friday and Saturday evening hours); Manta (8208 Meadow Hills Drive, opening date 2011) — printed with their conflicts standing.