Sting, Bowie Eye Burlesque Club Downtown

A planned burlesque nightclub reportedly financed by musicians David Bowie and Sting is running into heated opposition from residents in the Lower East Side.

The club, planned for a building just north of Chinatown, could bring a new glitz and nightlife to Kenmare Street, a residential and relatively low-rent retail strip that is gradually seeing a shift to a more upscale business makeup. But the opposition indicates that as the Lower East Side becomes thicker with luxury condominiums, businesses seeking to locate there may face a less permissive environment than they once did.

With a Community Board meeting scheduled for tomorrow, residents are vehemently opposed to the nightclub, named Forty Deuce and spearheaded by club mogul Ivan Kane, criticizing it as a late-night striptease club that is grossly inappropriate for the neighborhood.

Its owners assert that the business is modeled after upscale nightclubs of a previous era, in which women performed, keeping some of their clothes on, before well-dressed crowds in smoke-filled rooms.

"Watch as gifted burlesque dancers sashay down the bar in front of the legendary curtain of pearls," a page on the Web site for Forty Deuce said in April before it was taken down in recent months. "New York City nightclubs haven't had this kind of hip, swanky entertainment since the days when nightclubs became classics."

The site, which called the atmosphere "naughty yet sophisticated," has provided fodder for opponents, who have gathered about 2,000 signatures against the club. Several elected officials, including Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents the Lower East Side, have recommended the state not issue the club a liquor license. That would likely kill the plans.

The proposed business is the latest in a series of open-late bars and clubs to sprout in the area, including the Box on Chrystie Street, and a late-night café and tequila bar just down Kenmare Street, La Esquina.

Forty Deuce sits on the western end of the Kenmare Street, a street in the nebulous neighborhood between Chinatown and SoHo where residents can still be seen hanging their laundry to dry on clotheslines on buildings.

"I can't think of anywhere but the edge of the river that this is appropriate," Robin Goldberg, a resident opposing the club's liquor license, said. "It's just the scope and the content of it that is truly inappropriate."

The director of the SoHo Alliance, Sean Sweeney, said the club "is just the first wave of a tsunami of late night establishments that want to move in."

An attorney representing Mr. Kane's company, Robert Bookman, said the company was waiting on the decision about a license from the New York State Liquor Authority.

The community opposition, he said, comes as the residents want to block any late night establishment, and is not particular to the burlesque club. Neighbors are "opposing lawfully applied for, lawfully zoned late night establishment," Mr. Bookman said.

"We have an extraordinarily important industry and a very hostile regulatory environment," Mr. Bookman said. "It's not only enormously frustrating, but it's extremely problematical for the city and the city's economy."

In the spring, Community Board 2 issued a letter of recommendation for the liquor license for the Forty Deuce, though members say the decision came as a result of a misunderstanding about the nature of the establishment. Now, the Community Board wants to vote again on the club, and is likely to urge the New York State Liquor Authority to not grant the license.

The recommendations from the community and elected officials to the State Liquor Authority are non-binding, though industry insiders say the authority seems to be heeding the recommendations with increasing frequency.

The involvement of David Bowie and Sting in the club was reported earlier by the New York Observer. Mr. Bookman said Mr. Bowie and Sting were involved in the deal, though he did not know to what extent.