The rise and fall of The Boogie, iconic downtown Springfield club

For most of its life, The Boogie made its name as a crowded haven for young twentysomethings, a downtown Springfield meat market bouncing to the beat of pop and hip-hop. Drinks were often served in plastic cups.

The Boogie opened in November 1997, a time when downtown was struggling to reinvent itself. When it closed this summer, it left an impact on a collective memory.

"The Boogie was not at all a fancy or even a clean place on most nights," remembered Sarah Redinger Pfeiffer. Now in Kansas City, she and her husband both spent their college years in Springfield.

The Boogie was a "staple" of her memories of the mid-2000s. Fond ones.

"They played good music, had cheap drinks and there was always a good energy about it," she said.

While there was no shortage of newly minted adults to pay cover charges and shell out for cocktail specials, the club's owner, Luke Mayo, said slightly older people weren't coming downtown like they used to.

He still thought The Boogie had a "good customer base," but that wasn't enough to keep the club from closing early this summer.

A variety of factors were at play, Mayo said. Mold growth was one. Run-ins with police, fire-code violations and a smoldering dispute with his landlord also took their toll.

'It was similar to a Cheers'

Mayo bought The Boogie from its founder, veteran club owner and restaurateur Billy Jalili, in 2010. After the purchase, Mayo rented the building from Jalili, who still owns the property.

When The Boogie closed in late May or early June — Mayo can't remember the exact date of Boogie's last night — it was much mourned by its fans and its founder.

"It makes me sad to see Boogie close down," Jalili said. "It was such a household name and everybody grew up and went on to have their own lives and children and still when they came back to Springfield, it was like 'oh, we have to go back to The Boogie.'"

"It was an icon," he added.

Lindsay Reis is a fan of The Boogie who now lives in Kansas City after spending her young-adult years in Springfield.

"It was similar to a Cheers," she said. "You began to know everyone."

"Here we didn't care if you were Greek, an athlete, everyone was friends," she said. She befriended many of the staff outside of the bar.

She acknowledged that The Boogie had its flaws. Like other Boogie fans interviewed for this story, Reis thought it was "too crowded."

"(It was) a place you definitely outgrew... like a 'St. Elmo's Fire,'" she said, referring to a 1985 movie about young college graduates learning to be adults.

Reis added she was glad she didn't see too much of The Boogie with the lights on. "I never knew what my shoe was stuck to in that place," she said.

In September of 2011, The Boogie welcomed MTV's "Jersey Shore" reality show cast member Ronnie Magro for an appearance.

A Missouri State student journalism website, #sgfreport, reported that "Ronnie seemed to be bored at the event," for which he was more than two hours late.

Rhiannon Edwards, who now lives in Battlefield, said she and her crew were at The Boogie every Wednesday for quarter-draw specials. (Yes, that's 25 cents per beer.)

"We'd play cards and drink with our friends all night," she said.

Later, she stopped going because "it got kind of gross, like they didn't keep up with cleaning and repairs."

A different downtown

The stone-and-brick building that later became The Boogie was built in 1884, according to county assessor records.

High above South Avenue, the facade still carries a Keet & Rountree Dry Goods sign, a relic from a hardware company that operated downtown from 1873 until the 1930s, said John Sellars, executive director of the History Museum on the Square.

Sellars said Keet & Rountree put in the iconic water tower at the back of the building. It stands above the entrance of what later became Bubbles champagne lounge, The Boogie's sister nightclub that was connected via an indoor hallway. The tower pressurized water for an early sprinkler system.

Jalili bought the property in 1997, just a few years after Heer's department store closed forever.

"It was a long time ago," he told the News-Leader. "Basically, there were not too many businesses at that time. Downtown wasn't that busy yet."

Pubs and clubs came and went like tumbleweeds, News-Leader accounts from the period show.

There were a few restaurants: Bijan's, a high-end property owned by Billy Jalili and his family, was one. It is now the downtown outpost of Black Sheep Burgers & Shakes, which the Jalilis also own.

After stopping lunch service at Bijan's in the late '90s, Jalili wanted to open a lunch place that would switch to live entertainment by night.

"Back then, people just didn't come to the (downtown) restaurants during the day," Holly Howitt told the News-Leader. Now a garden food educator with the New York City public school system, Howitt was the first chef at Jalili's new venture, then called Rum Boogie Cafe.

The name was later dropped when the original Rum Boogie Cafe, based in Memphis, Tennessee, sued for federal service mark infringement.

Howitt said that by day they served lunch. By night, Rum Boogie was "heavily attended, especially by college students," Howitt added.

"We would have pizza at night, and other things to nosh on with the bar happening," Howitt said. "As you know, in Springfield, they like to drink. That’s where you make money is on the liquor and stuff like that."

Howitt left Springfield after several months at Rum Boogie. She said it was a good experience. Jalili, she said, "was always very kind to me."

Despite popular nights, Howitt said, it soon became clear that there wasn't enough lunch business to justify keeping The Boogie open during the day.

It was time for a change.

A DJ who 'did a good job'

Jalili said he "really, really can't remember" which year was best for Boogie revenues while he owned the club.

But he acknowledged that after focusing on being a nighttime destination, the business slumped in the early 2000s, a period that included the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the eight-month recession of 2001.

"It was very, very low business," Jalili said.

In 2004, he brought in a new manager, Preston Havens.

"He was really, really great," Jalili said. "He did a great job."

Havens was a former Bijan's server who moonlighted as DJ Kid Conundrum. He put on a twice-monthly electronica night at The Boogie and was well-liked in the music scene, the News-Leader reported at the time.

In September 2004, Havens died in his sleep at age 32 due to a diabetic seizure.

Inevitably, the tragedy meant more change for The Boogie.

'It blew up overnight'

In 2004, when he was 21, Nathan Wells was hired on as a Boogie bartender.

"Their crowd was disappearing," he recalled.

Jalili said around that same time, he also promoted a 21-year-old Luke Mayo from server at Bijan's to manager of The Boogie, the beginning of a 13-year association with the club.

"He did a really good job taking over the good work," Jalili said. "He was learning and he really listened to what we did, what we said. He developed himself."

At the beginning, Mayo, Wells and a crew of bartenders were closely tied to Missouri State and its Greek fraternity and sorority life, Wells said.

That came in handy.

"We did heavy promotion in the Greek community to build the bar up and make it a popular spot again," Wells told the News-Leader.

The Boogie started playing more popular music, and it hired "well-spoken" active Greeks, Wells said.

"Up to that point, it was more a dive bar with a lot of regulars and crazy techno music nights," Wells said. He and Mayo wanted to take The Boogie a different direction: From "a dive-y weird regulars' bar that just can't get by to a popular college bar."

Wells said the strategy worked.

"It blew up overnight," he said. On weekends, lines formed outside the door before opening time at 8:30 p.m.

The Boogie became the first stop of the night for downtown club-goers on their way to larger venues like Icon or Jordan Creek, Wells said. From opening time until 11 p.m. or midnight, The Boogie ran cheap drink specials, particularly on Thursdays.

Sarah Redinger Pfeiffer, the Boogie fan who now lives in Kansas City, remembers $5 all-you-can-drink deals.

There was also the Boogie Bowl, a fishbowl-style cocktail inspired by a beverage Wells and three other bartenders encountered during a spring break weekend in Memphis.

What were the ingredients?

"It was just about everything, man," Wells recalled. "Vodka, rum, gin — what else? All the cordials: peach schnapps, triple sec, pineapple juice, orange juice, grenadine. Then we topped it with champagne. Kinda legendary at the time."

"All the other bars in town kinda copied it," Wells said.

'It was getting very hard to work with him'

Amid the "debauchery and general good times," as a former bartender described The Boogie, Mayo was leading a busy life as manager, then owner, of The Boogie.

The narratives told by Mayo and Jalili about The Boogie diverge when it comes to what happened after Mayo bought the business, in 2010.

Mayo said he paid $350,000 for the club.

"Let me see," Jalili said when the News-Leader asked him how much Mayo paid. "That’s not correct. And he — I carried some of the loan. I still do. And he got the rest of the loan from the bank — and it wasn’t that much. It was not that much."

Mayo's recollection is that the Boogie sale was an olive branch from Jalili.

Around 2008, not long after Jalili opened Bubbles champagne lounge in the rear of the Boogie building, Mayo wanted to invest in a new venture with the Jalili family.

In Mayo's telling, the Jalilis decided to open a new nightclub, Zan, without including Mayo.

"When I graduated college, to make it right, they sold me The Boogie," Mayo said.

Jalili said that at one point, he and his business partners in his family indeed had "a game plan" to go into business with Mayo, but that it didn't work out.

"About that time, he changed," Jalili told the News-Leader. "He changed in different ways that it was getting very hard to work with him... the mood, his behavior toward us and everything, that changed."

"That was not the Luke I knew before and worked with."

The relationship between Jalili and Mayo deteriorated over time.

"I wouldn't want to get into arguments with him," Mayo said. "The relationship was so difficult, so touchy."

Mayo claimed competition with Jalili properties over drink specials and retaining quality employees was unfair. "Made my life hell," he said.

Jalili dismissed accusations of unfair competition.

"At one point they were all working together — Boogie, Bubbles and Zan," Jalili said. "But again, when Luke started changing his ways and his moods, then that all fell apart. That's when he was doing his own thing, we were doing our own thing. I don't think there was anything unfair."

'By my standards, they should have covered it'

Building maintenance was a consistent sore spot for Mayo.

In Mayo's view, landlord Jalili maintained the Boogie's building so badly that it became less than habitable.

"I didn't sign the best sort of lease" when he began renting the building from Jalili, Mayo said, though the structure seemed to be in "okay condition" when he bought the business in 2010.

Jalili told the News-Leader that upon purchasing The Boogie, Mayo signed a "triple net" lease on 321 South Avenue, meaning a tenant commits to paying for all building maintenance, real estate taxes and building insurance.

Building maintenance was Mayo's responsibility, not his, Jalili said.

Around 2013, the roof began leaking, exacerbated by cracking due to cold weather, Mayo said.

There were other issues, Mayo said, including with bathroom floors and basement plumbing. Leaking caused damage to televisions, walk-in coolers and lighting systems.

"By my standards, they should have covered it," he said.

Jalili said that he had an insurance claim on the building following the roof leakage. Mayo got a lump sum, and Jalili put in a new roof.

"It didn't cover half the damages," Mayo said.

Water damage spread throughout the building, preparing the way for mold growth, Mayo said.

A few weeks before he shuttered the club, Mayo hired experts to examine environmental conditions inside The Boogie.

Triangle Environmental Science, based in Rolla, identified 15 instances of what it deemed "severe" mold growth inside The Boogie, meaning that "professional renovation and mold abatement" might be needed.

In an interview with the News-Leader, Jalili reiterated his view that the terms of Mayo's lease meant that Mayo was responsible for the club's interior upkeep, and thus, preventing water damage and mold growth.

"They were really not keeping the inside repaired," Jalili said. "There was wear and tear, there were some ice machine areas leaking, water coming out of the ice machine going downstairs. He should have repaired all those. It's his responsibility."

Behind the bar, ice bins and beverage guns — Mayo's equipment — was leaking, Jalili said.

Jalili added, "Any person in a business has to take care of their business — and he did not. And he's trying to blame it on me."

The dispute got personal.

"At one time," Jalili said, "he started saying really nasty things to people on social media about myself, Mike (Billy Jalili's brother and business partner), and he would just say nasty things. When I say nasty, he was very nasty."

Eventually, Mayo was asked not to visit any of the Jalili family's properties.

"We kinda cut off communication," Mayo said. He made good on the rent when it was due — $5,500 per month.

"As far as that, Luke was very good at paying his rent," Jalili said. "He was on time. I had no problem."

Mayo said he has retained a Springfield lawyer, David Schroeder, who is "handling the close of business." Schroeder confirmed that Mayo is a client but did not respond to a News-Leader question about possible legal action, if any, by deadline.

'I was never caught or charged with anything'

As his business relationship with Jalili collapsed, Mayo became entangled in other confrontations.

"The harassment by the city and its officials was almost as bad as landlords'," Mayo told the News-Leader.

Mayo said that since 2010, he was pulled over 22 times by Springfield police "trying to catch me drinking and driving home from my business."

"They would bring drug dogs out and search my vehicles, and I was never caught or charged for anything but was constantly harassed," he said.

Municipal court records detail Mayo's run-ins with law enforcement.

He got a speeding ticket in 2012. He got another for running a red light in 2011. Twice, in 2010, he was ticketed for parking too long in a space. Twice, in 2009, he was ticketed for parking in handicapped spaces. In 2008, he was ticketed for failing to display his registration tabs. In 2005, he got a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the road.

When asked whether there was any coordinated or informal effort by Springfield police to harass Mayo personally or affect business function at The Boogie, Chief Paul Williams said there was no effort and declined to comment further through Lisa Cox, department spokeswoman.

Public records show that Springfield police were familiar with The Boogie.

Cox said that in The Boogie's final year — June 2016 through June 2017 — the department documented 156 calls for service from the club.

That is a "higher call volume" than the number of calls for service generated over the same period by six other downtown nightclubs that Cox checked at the News-Leader's request. (Note that a call for service does not necessarily mean a crime occurred.)

Ernie Biggs Chicago Style Piano Bar: 56 calls

Finnegans Wake: 18 calls

Martha's Vineyard: 62 calls

The Outland: 31 calls

Patton Alley Pub: 41 calls

Zan: 52 calls

In 2017, Cox said that police responding to incidents at The Boogie reported a few liquor law violations, some stolen cell phones and one assault between bar customers.

Perhaps the most serious incident report mentioning The Boogie in recent years was an alleged rape on Dec. 31, 2015.

During the investigation, according to the report, the alleged victim was unable to provide police with a location where a sexual assault might have taken place. The case was later suspended due to "lack of cooperation."

'Blatant disrespect'

On three occasions, city fire marshals found violations of municipal fire code at The Boogie while Mayo was owner.

During the Halloween pub crawl of 2013, fire marshals cited Mayo for overcrowding at The Boogie and its sister club, Bubbles.

At bar-closing hour, two marshals counted a total of 393 people exiting The Boogie and Bubbles, more than double the legal maximum occupancy load for the two interconnected spaces. The legal limit was 175.

In a scathing incident report, Fire Marshal Phil Noah characterized The Boogie's Halloween festivities as a "severe overcrowding event." Fire marshals also found that The Boogie and Bubbles had both posted "unauthorized" occupant load signage, making it seem to unsuspecting members of the public that the clubs were legally allowed to welcome 232 people at a time.

Noah characterized the incident as "...blatant disrespect and non-compliance for the laws in effect" on the part of club management.

Zan, owned by Billy Jalili, was cited the same night, using the same language. That club stuffed 538 people into a space with an occupancy maximum of 294.

The next weekend, The Boogie did it again.

This time, the occasion was a Halloween Hangover Party put on at The Boogie, Bubbles and Zan.

Fire marshals patrolled "most of" downtown's nightclubs that night, according to an incident report dated Nov. 1, 2013, also written by Fire Marshal Phil Noah.

Zan's customer count was about 70 to 100 people below its legal occupancy limit.

But Mayo's clubs defied the law, according to the incident report.

Around midnight, two marshals conducted a customer count and advised Mayo that the Boogie complex at 321 South Ave. was "at or just over his maximum capacity," meaning that fire marshals can require a club owner to limit customer entry to "1 in, 1 out" until closing time.

According to the report, a "visibly angry" Mayo approached the marshals and said, "I couldn't believe you have placed us on 1 to 1, I think this is [expletive redacted]."

The marshals explained that The Boogie and its sister club were straining their legal occupancy limits.

"I can't believe you don't have anything better to do than this," Mayo reportedly answered.

A little more than an hour later, marshals counted Boogie customers as they exited during bar-closing time. Mayo and his staff had allowed 90 more people to enter, breaking the legal occupancy load once again.

A third overcrowding incident took place May 6, 2016 — Dead Day Eve, a traditional party night for Missouri State students near the end of the semester.

In the two-and-a-half years since Mayo's first run-in with fire marshals, he had made changes to The Boogie facility and was approved for a higher maximum occupancy load: 270 people. This time, The Boogie and its baby sister, Bubbles, were over by 40 occupants, according to the incident report.

Municipal court records show that Mayo was fined $544.50 for each of the 2013 incidents. In 2016, he entered a plea that did not admit guilt, was fined $454.50 and was given a 730-day suspended execution of sentence.

'There's pressure to maximize their profits'

In an interview with the News-Leader, Fire Marshal Mark Epps denied that the fire department harassed The Boogie or any other nightclubs, then and now.

He pointed out that fire marshals also investigate reports of overcrowded loft parties and that most clubs do an "excellent job" policing their own occupancy loads.

For example, Epps said that Jalili, owner of Zan and founder of The Boogie, "has turned over a new leaf" since Zan was cited in 2013.

Epps said that occupancy loads at clubs like Zan or The Boogie typically strain during major downtown events like pub crawls.

On Halloween or New Year's Eve, he said downtown often draws 7,000 or more people, while the total nightlife occupancy load in the district is about 4,000 people.

"Almost twice as many people are attending than can actually go in," he said.

For club owners, "there's pressure to maximize their profits this evening, get as many people in as they can."

This type of scenario has proven to be a recipe for disaster elsewhere, Epps said, which the fire department does not wish to see repeated in Springfield.

When writing incident reports, Springfield fire marshals frequently mention a 2013 nightclub fire in Brazil that killed 231 people.

Primo real estate, deserted

The Boogie has now been deserted for three months.

Mayo said he may have to file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of its closing. He said he breathes heavily and frequently loses his voice. Mayo said a physician found scarring in his throat and lungs, which Mayo believes is a result of mold.

Mayo acknowledges there is no proof that mold at The Boogie prompted illness in anyone.

The Centers for Disease Control say that mold can cause "health symptoms that are nonspecific" and that there is "no test that can prove an association" between mold and "particular health symptoms."

Mayo and Jalili both said that they never faced an investigation of The Boogie due to any Occupational Safety and Health Administration complaint from staff.

So, what happens now to the building at 321 South Ave. — where a sticky-floored, black-windowed Springfield icon danced the night away for 20 years?

In a recent interview with the News-Leader, the executive director of the Downtown Springfield Association, Rusty Worley, said he thought The Boogie's primo location would be "sought-after."

"I don't have any solid plans," Jalili told the News-Leader. "We had a few people interested in leasing it and a few interested in buying. We're going to put it on hold until later on. Maybe we'll do something ourselves. We’re not sure."

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