It’s not exactly a novel concept, but it’s a rarity: Patrons come to a club packing their own booze, which can be stored for them on the premises. Rather than carry a traditional liquor license, the members-only establishment is BYOB — bring your own bottle — and serves customers shots of their own alcohol.

In St. Paul’s old Rondo neighborhood, a developer and a cemetery manager are hoping to install a “bottle club” called The Lex at 976 Concordia Ave., the site of a former American Legion Hall that had been a magnet for trouble.

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St. Paul man threatened another man with a sword, charges say “We need a chance to prove to the neighbors that the past is behind us,” said The Lex proprietor Charles “Jazz” Carter, who oversees a series of cemeteries throughout the metro.

The effort may be poised to backfire.

The St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections is frowning on the last-ditch attempt to convert the former Attucks-Brooks American Legion Hall at Concordia Avenue and Chatsworth Street into a bottle club. The proposal faces an uphill battle before the St. Paul City Council, which will vote Wednesday on a resolution that would instead ban “consumption and display” permits altogether.

The permits, which are distributed by the state, allow patrons of unlicensed private businesses to drink on-premises. City or county officials must sign off on any request for a consumption and display permit, which are virtually unheard of within St. Paul.

TROUBLED HISTORY, BETTER FUTURE?

Since 2012, Carter and St. Paul developer Joshua Howe have been tangling with the city over The Lex, their effort to reinvent the crime-plagued Attucks-Brooks American Legion Hall into an entertainment venue. The American Legion Hall fell behind on rent payments and closed in 2012, and efforts to reopen it under new management have hit repeated roadblocks.

Carter, who says he has no connection to the old Attucks-Brooks management, had once envisioned dubbing the one-story hall and its basement bar the “Ladies Choice Social Club,” which drew tough scrutiny from the city. Officials questioned whether he was affiliated with the Sin City Deciples (sic), a historically-black “outlaw” motorcycle club for Harley Davidson riders.

Members of the Sin City Deciples — many of them military veterans — traditionally call their clubhouses “Sity Hall,” and folks at St. Paul City Hall weren’t impressed with the comparison.

In an interview, Carter said he had not been active with the motorcycle club in two years. He said Howe had put more than $210,000 into remodeling the shuttered American Legion Hall.

“It’s never been ‘Sin City,’ ” said Carter, criticizing the city’s handling of his business proposal. “It was called Ladies Choice/The Lex. They assumed it was going to be the Sin City Motorcycle Club out of their own intuition.

“You can’t compare this place to the American Legion,” he added. “Everything has been redone. We are an upscale private club. You have to be 35 or over to enter, unless you know a member.”

A parking lot that had been the scene of a double shooting in 2012 is now enclosed behind decorative wooden fencing painted a dark-hued red, and most of the old lot is now patio grass. “The patio for us is a way to transform it and put a garden where the gangs used to be,” Howe said.

On Sunday, The Lex held a neighborhood hot dog cookout on the grass.

“They’re what a club is supposed to be in a residential neighborhood,” said Sam Walker, a recently retired Metro Transit bus driver who lives across from The Lex on Chatsworth Street. Under previous management, the American Legion Hall was a “total thug hangout” where members openly smoked marijuana and dealt drugs in the parking lot, Walker said. “It was a terrible history.”

THE LIQUOR LICENSE ORDEAL

Nightclubs situated in residential areas outside of downtown cannot serve alcohol unless the site applies for a liquor license within a two-year window of losing its previous license. The American Legion’s liquor license was suspended in September 2012, but The Lex abandoned its application while it sorted out other issues with the Department of Safety and Inspections.

Carter blames the city for not explaining that the clock was ticking or spelling out how to extend the application deadline.

“They railroaded me, misled me, misinformed me and discriminated against me,” he said. “If you’re working with me over two years, why not let me know I have two years?”

The issue went last year to an administrative law judge, who recommended that the city continue to deny The Lex a liquor license. The St. Paul City Council upheld that decision in October.

“I think it’s actually unusual that a matter is this clear,” said council President Russ Stark at the time. “If there were a path to establishing a (nightclub) outside of downtown, I haven’t seen it.”

The council hearing drew fans and foes from the surrounding community, including neighbors who remembered the hall as a hot spot for drug sales and police calls.

A petition against The Lex drew 24 signatures, mostly from residents along Carroll Avenue.

Renee Tyler said she saw some 50 patrons milling around The Lex on Saturday, and many were taking up parking spots in front of neighbors’ homes. Some put their flashers on, stopped in the intersection and got out of their vehicles to chat with friends.

“Nobody is policing it. Where is security for an event that large?” Tyler said. “I cannot support an owner or a tenant that doesn’t know what’s going on at his own establishment.”

Lex supporters include representatives of the African-American Leadership Council and the Aurora-St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corp. They’ve said that reviving a business in the historically black Rondo neighborhood would be only fitting, given the number of black establishments that closed when Interstate 94 was built through the heart of the community in the 1960s.

BRING YOUR OWN BOOZE

Rather than back down, Carter and Howe are now attempting to open The Lex as a bottle club and install a state-issued “consumption and display” permit, which would allow members to bring in their own alcohol.

A proposed city council resolution would deny Carter’s request that the city sign off on his application to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety; the resolution also bars all future requests for such permits. A public hearing on the resolution will take place Wednesday evening, and a council vote is likely immediately afterward.

City staff say they’ve received one request for a consumption and display permit in 30 years, and none are currently active within the city.

The Department of Safety and Inspection’s “current practice is to not to sign off on state consumption and display permit applications,” states a Feb. 10 staff memo to the city council. “The city attorney’s office has recommended that the city council review this issue, and, if deemed appropriate, amend (the) ordinance to reflect this long-standing policy.”

City officials have long suspected that The Lex is already serving alcohol without a bottle license. In a letter dated March 1, the Department of Safety and Inspections alerted Carter that “continued operation as an unlicensed and unpermitted bottle club may result in criminal and/or civil action.”

St. Paul police raided The Lex on Feb. 27, 2015, but no arrests were made.

“It took 14 officers to come in on a minority club?” Carter said last October. “They … saw we were not selling alcohol; we were serving alcohol to members. They apologized and left.”

In findings dated Aug. 31, 2015, Administrative Law Judge Ann O’Reilly declined to weigh in on whether the Feb. 27 incident constituted an illegal sale, though she sided with the city on not renewing the liquor license.

At least three times, Carter has acquired a special event permit allowing him to serve alcohol and a limited food menu on a particular date. Howe said The Lex has hosted bachelor and bachelorette parties, and even a wedding.

If The Lex closes, Howe wonders if the site will simply stay vacant. If abandoned, the 1960s-era one-story brick structure would likely convert to residential zoning, but given the area’s relatively low housing prices, he doubts a developer will come by to transform the night club into owner-occupied housing or even apartments.

The city has “never given it a chance,” Howe said. “You’ve got a couple motivated guys trying to turn the place around. The zoning here is (residential). Does this look like a house?”

FROM HALL OF FAME TO HALL OF INFAMY

Carter and Howe say they’re ready to attract a more select clientele than the old American Legion Hall did in its final days.

At its height, the Attucks-Brooks American Legion sponsored neighborhood ball teams that gave rise to future Major League Baseball Hall of Famers Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor, the manager of the Minnesota Twins. Soon, World War II-era vets gave way to Vietnam-era vets, and membership changed.

By 1996, its glory days seemed long past. Then-St. Paul City Council member Jerry Blakey listened to neighbors of the American Legion post recite a long list of concerns about suspected drug sales and other activity there.

“It disturbs me, the level I have seen this organization sink to,” Blakey said at the time. “It was partly responsible in the past for producing people like Dave Winfield.”

The building was sold in October 2011 to Howe’s company, Anicca LLC of Grand Avenue, for $199,000. The American Legion Hall closed in July 2012 following a rent dispute with Howe and a series of high-profile incidents, including a double shooting near its front door that June. A man was shot and killed in the back alley in 2009.

Attucks-Brooks is not the only American Legion club that has struggled.

While St. Paul is technically home to 19 American Legion clubs, the Arcade-Phalen Amercian Legion Post 577 is the only remaining St. Paul club with its own Legion hall.

The club, at 1129 Arcade St., embarked on a makeover in November 2014, and it needs to raise $65,000 by May 30 to complete repairs. A GoFundMe.com fundraising page set up in late January had raised nearly $3,400 as of Thursday.