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Locals Wary of 'Queen of the Night' Show's Planned Move to Hell's Kitchen

By Maya Rajamani | February 11, 2016 12:12pm
 The dinner-theater show
The dinner-theater show "Queen of the Night" is looking to move into the Providence nightclub space at 311 W. 57th St. in Hell's Kitchen.
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Facebook/Queen of the Night

HELL’S KITCHEN — A dinner-theater show that recently ended its run at the Paramount Hotel could find a new home inside a former Hell’s Kitchen nightclub, despite the venue's history of raucous crowds.

Residents living in the neighborhood fear that “Queen of the Night” — set to replace Providence nightclub at 311 W. 57th St, between Eighth and Ninth avenues — would maintain the club’s trend of drawing late-night crowds and noise to the area.

“Queen of the Night” — a "Cirque du-Soleil"-style dinner-theater performance — plans to hold shows at around 8 p.m. and midnight five nights a week at the venue, if parent company Variety Worldwide’s bid to buy the nightclub space is successful, an attorney for the company said at a Community Board 4 Business Licenses and Permits committee meeting on Tuesday.

The second show would end at 2 or 2:30 a.m. and the venue would close at 4 a.m., so people can “gradually stagger out,” attorney Alexander Victor told committee members reviewing Variety Worldwide’s liquor license application.

The would-be operators also planned to lease the space out for events that could draw up to 750 people on the two nights that "Queen of the Night" would not be showing, Victor said.

But the late closing hours, the prospect of attendees lining up on the sidewalks outside the venue and the high occupancy limit concerned some board members and residents in attendance.

“I want to remind this committee that this venue was so problematic at a time that the committee voted not to renew the liquor license for this establishment,” said West 57th Street resident and former CB4 member Raul Larios. “[The 750 occupancy] has been a problem before, and I’m afraid it’s going to be a problem again.”

“Seven hundred and fifty people being dumped onto our neighborhood at that hour of the night? They’re not all going directly into the subway,” West 57th Street resident Bob Minor added.

Victor maintained that “Queen of the Night” shows would be capped at around 350 patrons, but the company's vague plans for the show’s two nights off raised a red flag for committee member Christine Berthet.

“I am very concerned about the other two days, especially because the limit is 750… and it’s 4 o’clock,” she said.

Other attendees saw the dinner theater as a welcome alternative to Providence, which drew noise, crowds and fights to the neighborhood in the past and forced the owner of a neighboring diner to close at 11 p.m. so he wouldn’t have to serve the club’s rowdy and destructive patrons.

“I’d be proud to have them there… It’d be the best thing on the block,” said a West 57th resident who said he caught a performance of "Queen of the Night" at the Paramount before it closed.

“The crowd was gorgeous, it was such a different echelon,” said the attendee, who did not provide his name.

Another West 57th Street resident was disturbed by both the content of the show and the proposed venue.

“The subject of the shows, for this past-70-year-old-lady, is not exactly what I’d like my grandchildren to see,” said the resident, who also declined to give her name. “I think it’s a terrible location [for the dinner theater].”

But Victor warned that if CB4 and the State Liquor Authority did not approve a liquor license for “Queen of the Night,” the venue would likely remain a nightclub.

“A lot of these complaints do seem to relate to the prior operator,” Victor said. “We are trying to do what we think would be a better use for the space.”

Victor and Variety Worldwide representatives at the meeting ultimately agreed to CB4's stipulations calling for two additional security guards to monitor any events that drew over 350 people, as well as earlier closing hours on the show’s off-nights and and an occupancy level reduced to around 600 people, he said after the meeting.

The committee ultimately voted in favor of the application.

The application will go before the full board for a vote at its next meeting on March 2.