30-year-old Kansas City bar with history of shootings forced to close. Is this the end?
Jan Bentley of Kansas City is fed up.
She is one of dozens of residents who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the controversial Bob’s N Motion bar at East 57th Street and Troost Avenue. That’s where, according to Bentley and the notarized complaints of 28 other residents, 15 people have been shot and at least two killed since 2008.
“Years of neighborhood meetings with [owner Robert Ridgell], his staff and city staff have failed to help us,” Bentley wrote at the end of her April 28 complaint to Kansas City’s Board of Zoning Adjustment.
“Please do something!”
The bar has been the subject of multiple city investigations in the past 15 years that include repeated assaults, shootings, problems with sanitation, noise and most recently, a lack of off-street parking. This latest problem, which led to an early March zoning violation, has prevented the venue from renewing its liquor license.
City documents revealed the business has not provided appropriate off-street parking, despite city zoning ordinances that require 20 parking spots per 1,000 square feet for similarly situated bars and taverns. In order to reopen, Bob’s N Motion must provide 84 parking spots.
Since then, Bob’s N Motion’s doors have been padlocked shut, leaving the 30-year-old business and the nearby community in limbo. Ridgell is appealing the city’s decision and will meet with leaders again on Aug. 8.
Sean Ackerson, Executive Director of the Southtown Council, a not-for-profit advocating for residents and businesses on Troost Avenue from East 45th to 75th Street, never expected a business plagued by public safety problems to be closed over a parking dispute.
“Somebody figured out that the bar does not meet the city’s minimum parking requirement… If you think about a typical restaurant or bar they tend to have their own parking lots or designated areas where customers park and that gives [owners] some control,” he said.
Many community members, he said, have cycled through neighborhood leadership roles, each bright-eyed, promising an end to Bob’s N Motion. But all have failed. Many left discouraged, too exhausted with local bureaucracy to finish the job. And despite repeated shootings, other misbehavior and accusations of littering and loud noise, no problem has prompted action quite like Bob’s N Motion’s flawed parking system.
Ackerson, who joined the Southtown Council in 2016, said for most owners a parking lot comes with a greater responsibility and a liability to ensure patrons are “following the rules.” While Bob’s N Motion remained open, he said, not enough had been done to prevent people from committing crimes in the neighborhood.
A letter written by leaders of the Eastern 49/63 Neighborhood Coalition, representing a 3,300-home community a few blocks north of the venue, cited over 70 residents in addition to small business owners, each requesting the zoning board deny Ridgell’s appeal.
They referred to the business as a “nuisance to this section of Kansas City for two decades.”
“I would say that there are probably improvements that could be made that would assist in it being open in a way that meets the needs of the community,” said Anthony Maly, President of Eastern 49/63, who has lived in the area for about two years.
“[Those needs] just haven’t been met.”
A decade of problems
The complaints have been rolling in for years.
On June 5, 2008, Regulated Industries, which monitors city liquor licenses, suspended Bob’s N Motion’s liquor license for two days following an investigation into the venue’s quality of sanitation and safety, according to city documents obtained by The Star.
Less than four years later on Nov. 19, 2012, the business received another two-day suspension after one customer was physically assaulted and three others suffered gunshot wounds inside the bar. As part of the disciplinary measure, Ridgell was ordered to provide additional training to employees to prevent such an event from reoccurring.
Then three years later on Sept. 20, 2015, one customer was shot and killed.
About one month later, Ridgell told community members at a neighborhood meeting that employees had acted “correctly” in attempting to break-up the fatal disturbance and escort the customer involved outside. He said the business had been making strides to improve by raising the age limit to 25 years old and that he would consider increasing it yet again to the age of 30.
Still community members were frustrated over the “crowd that frequented Bob’s N Motion,” according to the Oct. 29, 2015 meeting notes.
“They are tired of dealing with customers that park all over the neighborhood, listen to music in their cars at an excessive noise level, urinate outdoors, drink alcoholic beverages and leave the bottles and cans on the ground, and become unruly and shoot guns in the neighborhood,” said Jim Ready, a manager for Regulated Industries, in the meeting.
Ready did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to city documents, the business risked having its license revoked if it continued to violate city code, which said that “No retail licensee or employee of the licensee shall cause a nuisance to or change the character of any residential area...”
Yet, at 8 p.m. on April 23, 2016, 42-year-old Derek Wren was shot and killed while standing on the corner of East 57th Street and Troost Avenue. Both the suspects and Wren had been inside the business shortly before the gunfire.
On April 29, 2016 Regulated Industries warned Ridgell that their liquor license would be revoked if another homicide occurred by March 31, 2017, otherwise known as the end of the licensing period, according to city documents.
Documents showed Ridgell was asked to continue attending meetings set up by the Eastern 49/63 group to discuss methods to improve security. He agreed, but told Ready both him and staff had not been treated well at previous meetings, despite having pursued “necessary measures to help curtail the violence.”
“He is not happy about the two homicides that occurred at his business over the past seven months, especially since one of those homicide victims was an employee of his,” meeting notes said of Ridgell.
His business was shut down for the next 21 days.
When it reopened, Ridgell said, no T-shirts or shorts could be worn by men inside the business. The bar would close at 11:30 p.m. until the end of the licensing period. Caps were prohibited and, after some back-and-forth with the city, tennis shoes would be allowed to appeal to an older customer base.
While Ridgell maintained that he had an appropriate amount of security measures in place, Ready contended that neither of the previous homicides had been picked up on business surveillance. After further discussions, Ridgell said he would add cameras and discuss the possibility of routine patrols around the bar area with Kansas City police.
On Oct. 25, 2022, three more people were shot near the business. One person was killed.
The bar was placed on a six month probation period beginning in early November, where any “nuisance” or “lewd incident” risked ending the business’s decades-long run.
Parking and public safety
Then came the parking problem.
On March 9, 2023, the business received notice that they had violated zoning laws by allowing a neighboring parking lot to fall into disrepair and having no other designated parking spaces off the street.
An Eastern 49/63 letter requesting the zoning board deny Ridgell’s appeal cited a neighboring beauty school House of Heavilin, which said their parking lot gate had been vandalized by patrons of the bar so often that they stopped replacing it and began to use chains.
Other neighbors reported reckless driving, parking on sidewalks, people dancing naked on streets and urinating, repeated drug deals and yelling at all hours.
“So it’s weird the public safety discussion is in the middle of a parking discussion,” Ackerson said.
“Not only would this parking give them the ability to have more control, but also it puts a burden on them to show they have more control.”
According to Ackerson, with their own parking lot, the owner would be better able to keep away people who are not paying customers, but congregate outside the bar and adjacent streets to party.
“When the property owners aren’t cleaning up their trash, for example, the city has the ability to say okay, you’re obligated to clean up your trash. It becomes really difficult in a situation, even if its a patron of the business, if that same activity is taking place on a public street.”
Many neighboring businesses and residents have been afraid to speak out against Bob’s N Motion for fear of retribution by patrons who enjoy frequenting the bar.
The majority of Bob’s N Motion’s customers are good people, who want to go about their evening safely, Ackerson said, but a minority have caused issues for the rest, contributing to a negative stereotype that’s surrounded Troost Avenue businesses for decades.
“We’ve got a ton of restaurants on Troost: They show up, they make food, they sell food, they go home and they run a good business and people enjoy it. They don’t have the drama, and if they do, they proactively address it,” he said.
“There are many people who go to Bob’s that aren’t naked and passed out, selling drugs. If they could limit it to that, they would probably be a community hub. The challenge Bob’s has had is that they can’t.”
This story was originally published July 27, 2023 at 4:50 PM.
