KC nightclub has harassed neighbors for 20 years. Legally, it shouldn’t even exist.

Update: On Tuesday, hours after this story posted, the office of the city manager for Kansas City announced the PM Crown club has been referred to a task force for nuisance businesses. That story is posted here.

A resident of Kansas City’s Santa Fe neighborhood didn’t bother calling the police when people broke into her house.

It was, she assumed, the people who parked in her driveway at night to go to the club around the corner, the PM Crown. She and other neighbors had given up calling police about the club, as it had proven futile. Instead, she just boarded up the front window of the home where she lives near 31st Street and Benton Boulevard.

Other neighbors have had the same problems for decades: the gunshots and loud music late at night, the streets crowded with cars, the pavement marked by bullets. Last month, a woman leaving the club was pinned against the brick wall by a hit-and-run driver and lost a leg.

All of these problems shouldn’t even exist — because neither should the club. The location at 2918 E. 31st Street has no liquor license and no business license.

City officials have been getting complaints about the club for about 20 years but have not succeeded in shutting it down permanently. The current operator has been convicted of selling liquor without a license and received probation. Police have responded to several noise complaints and have been there with city liquor license enforcement, but still the parties go on.

“You complain about it, but it doesn’t seem to go away,” said Marquita Taylor, president of the Santa Fe Area Council neighborhood association.

“It really doesn’t help our ability to do something better for our neighborhood. Nothing’s been done about it.”

PM Crown, which advertises itself with a sign out front as a private club, has been opening its doors for drinking and dancing since the 1990s.

When reached by phone, Shawn Copeland, one of the owners, said PM Crown should be registered with a different owner’s name. When The Star asked Copeland if he denied any affiliation with the club, Copeland hung up.

The storefront has no windows and is flanked by vacant lots, across the street from a city park. Most neighbors don’t know what happens inside, but they’ve described it as an “after-hours, private club.”

PM Crown has been dodging regulation from Kansas City officials since the late 1990s, despite multiple attempts from the city’s regulated industries division to shut it down, said Jim Ready, manager of the division that governs liquor licenses.

In the past 20 years, the division has tried to close the club four or five times because it was allegedly selling liquor without a license. At times, the club seems to close its doors for months or years at a time, leading some officials to think it’s gone for good.

“I really thought five years ago that it was the last of them,” Ready said.

But PM Crown keeps opening back up.

Two neighbors told The Star that to get in to PM Crown, you have to know one of the owners personally. If you do, you can rent out the venue for a party, or like some do, you can rent it out for a wedding or another special event.

PM Crown has been nicknamed by neighbors as “the good time place,” said Renee Collier, a neighbor who has lived nearby for two years.

When PM Crown has a party, Collier said, more people have come into the neighborhood, but partygoers have mostly stayed inside of the building. It mostly operates at night on Fridays and Saturdays.

Neighbors said on nights when the club is open, it’s hard to park in their neighborhood past midnight unless they have their own driveway. Police have been called for three loud music complaints in the past six months.

But many residents said they have stopped calling police altogether, as they have grown exhausted and lost hope that authorities would be capable of closing the club down.

The Star talked to about a dozen neighbors. All except two declined to be named since they live near the business and were concerned for their safety.

‘Non-compliant’

John Baccala, a spokesman for the city’s regulated industries division, described PM Crown as a “pop-up club,” which has made it harder for city officials to regulate it.

The division usually hears about the club reopening through neighbors’ complaints. Because the owners have traditionally been “non-compliant,” the city department turns the complaint over to the Kansas City Police Department.

Officer Darin Snapp, a Kansas City police spokesman, said officers typically go to an unregulated business to keep the peace. The department would not have any documentation of those visits, he said.

Snapp said the department couldn’t locate any incident reports from the club more than three years old unless a case number was provided because of a new record keeping system.

In 2012, one of the owners, Copeland, pleaded guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court to selling liquor at the club without payment of additional revenue charge or without a license. Police seized 16 bottles of liquor, 99 bottles of beer, 139 cans of beer, 4 dice and a digital scale, among other items, according to court records.

Copeland was sentenced to a year of probation, given a 90-day suspended sentence and ordered not to operate “any club that remains open after 2 a.m.”

Copeland is listed in county property records as operating the business.

His Facebook page said he has been operating it since April 1999, but Copeland recently deleted his association with the club from his social media.

Attempts to reach another owner, Dale Willis, were unsuccessful.

Without any regulation from the city, PM Crown bartenders are not effectively subject to mandatory liquor license background checks. Typically, city officials will check potential bartender hires for convicted sex offenses or any other criminal history, but Ready said that without regulation, “anyone can be handing you a glass of liquor.”

Ready said entering an unregulated business like PM Crown is “a gamble.”

“You just don’t know,” Ready said. “You have to think twice because you really don’t know what you’re stepping into.”

This story was originally published July 2, 2019 at 5:00 AM.