South Michigan Street: the adult bars and the city's buyout

documented 2005 — 2007

The strip, from the civic record: South Michigan Street's adult bars enter this history the way the saloon era's houses did — through the public record, in this case the Tribune's reporting of the city's own actions, indexed in the newspaper's archive. In 2005 the paper reported the city's planners hoping to redevelop the former Dudes 'N Darlins site on South Michigan Street: the building had been demolished by the Urban Enterprise Association, the city funded the demolition, and the site was for sale. The same record names the street's surviving trade at that date: the Boat Club, whose liquor license the state had placed in escrow while its owner sought a buyer — the state Alcohol and Tobacco Commission allowed the club's closure while letting the owner keep the license only to sell it, sinking an attempted sale plan in 2006 — and, in the paper's plain phrase, the "two girlie bars," Peaches and the Torch Lounge, that remained on South Michigan Street.

The buyout: The strip's end was a settlement. The Tribune's 2007 license reporting records that the city had purchased the properties of three adult businesses from Patricia Colley to settle a lawsuit over the city's amended adult-business ordinance, Colley retaining the liquor licenses to sell. One of them — the license formerly held by the Quarterback Club at 724–726 South Michigan Street, a room whose own name chain the same report preserves (the Ace-Hi first, then the Lipstick Lounge, then the Quarterback Club) — was bought by Texas Roadhouse Holdings, to be used at a new Texas Roadhouse at the Erskine Commons shopping area. The Torch Lounge's license was renewed the same season without opposition, the last documented beat of the street's adult-bar era: the buildings bought out by the city, the licenses sold on to a steakhouse, and South Michigan's girlie-bar row closed by purchase rather than by raid.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, as indexed in the newspaper's ProQuest archive — "City buying former strip club; planners hope to redevelop the site," with the paper's correction of 24 May 2005 (the Dudes 'N Darlins site for sale; the building demolished by the Urban Enterprise Association with city funds); "State sinks Boat Club sale plan," 2006 (the license in escrow, the ATC's closure terms, Peaches and the Torch Lounge remaining on South Michigan Street); "Torch Lounge license renewed," 2007 (the Quarterback Club's name chain — Ace-Hi, Lipstick Lounge, Quarterback Club — at 724–726 South Michigan Street; the license's sale to Texas Roadhouse Holdings for the Erskine Commons restaurant; the city's purchase of three adult businesses' properties from Patricia Colley in settlement of the adult-business-ordinance lawsuit, the licenses retained for sale).