AUSTINTOWN — A problematic bar and night club closed in December but township officials fear that it could return to haunt the neighborhood again.

At Monday’s regular meeting of the Austintown Township Board of Trustees, Zoning Inspector Darren Crivelli asked trustees to initiate the process of amending Austintown’s zoning map to prevent the former Zodiac Club Lounge and Grill from reopening as a bar or bottle club.

A bottle club is a social club that allows patrons to bring their own beverages and does not require a liquor permit under Ohio Law.

Crivelli said such an idea was floated when he met with Zodiac business owner Brian Van Dusen in July, though Van Dusen said Tuesday that he has no intention of operating a bottle club there or anywhere else.

Either way, Crivelli doesn’t want to have to worry about it.

After a December shooting, the liquor permit attached to the business is in storage, Crivelli said.

He has proposed changing the zoning for three parcels on South Four Mile Run Road from B-2 to B-1. The change would eliminate the possibility of any type of restaurant or social gathering place operating in the building. B-1 zoning would restrict the property to office or light warehousing space.

“I advised (Van Dusen’s) attorney John McNally, been here done this, and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result,” Crivelli said. “The place is a nuisance to the neighborhood and it’s a threat to our safety services.”

Crivelli said the township’s Zoning Board of Appeals approved a conditional use permit for the Zodiac in 2017 for a bar with a food service component that was supposed to be a significant part of the business. In late 2019, when it turned out to be just a club that caused problems for police and the neighborhood, the township held a hearing and revoked the conditional use permit.

Van Dusen filed a pro se appeal in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and a magistrate overturned the revocation, later adding that the township could not appeal the decision.

Crivelli said they planned to try again in 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt. The business did not operate again for about two years.

“Once it started up again, they didn’t seem to have set hours but when they did have an event, usually the neighbors knew it, if not police and fire or zoning,” Crivelli said.

At one point, Crivelli and then Lt. Valorie Delmont — who is now police chief — went to the business and found that part of the basement had been sectioned off into private spaces with beds. Crivelli said that was immediately shut down.

The Zodiac posed numerous issues in 2024 alone.

The Ohio Board of Liquor Control website shows citations connected to workers’ compensation violations, writing bad checks and tax problems. But everything came to a head on Sept. 22, when police responded to another complaint from nearby residents about a full parking lot and noise coming from the business well after 4 a.m.

When an officer responded to conduct a liquor license inspection, a fight broke out just as he arrived and the crowd began to flee. Many fled back into the bar and locked the doors behind them so that other patrons and police could not enter the bar, while others inside were unable to exit, which constituted a fire code violation.

Eric Wolf, enforcement commander for the Ohio Investigative Unit, said that when his unit arrived Sept. 27, they issued a state citation for hindering an inspection, per Austintown’s report, and found multiple other violations while they were there.

He said Zodiac’s license allows it to only serve beer and wine but the bar was found to be serving mixed drinks using hard liquor.

Wolf said inspectors also found marijuana in the office, a handgun hidden in a basement trash can and nonspecific unsanitary conditions.

On Dec. 14, as patrons were leaving the business well after 3 a.m., someone fired more than 25 shots from a semi-automatic rifle and then sped off. Nobody was injured in the shooting, but it prompted trustees to call for the closure of the business.

Crivelli said Monday that in a late December meeting, building owner Eli Alexander and his attorney, Scott Cochran, told the township that Van Dusen’s lease was month-to-month and would not be renewed when it expired at the end of December.

The Zodiac signs were taken down and the locks were changed. The business has been silent since then.

However, a suspicious call in July to Crivelli led him to believe that the Zodiac saga may not yet be over. He said the caller claimed to be Van Dusen but did not sound at all like him. Then McNally called to say he and Van Dusen would like to discuss reopening the business.

An Aug. 12 meeting with Van Dusen, McNally, Crivelli and Delmont shed more light on the situation, Crivelli said.

Van Dusen said he had permission from Alexander to speak with authority over the property. Van Dusen said that he was the one who had paid for the locks to be changed, and that his lease with Alexander is current.

“I don’t believe our problem is Brian Van Dusen and the Zodiac. Our problem is the property owner,” Crivelli said.

Two days later, police were again called to the property.

The report states that Christian Van Dusen — Brian’s son — and his girlfriend were at the business cleaning, when a group of young women approached them and accused Christian’s girlfriend of throwing a rock through the window of their house on nearby Huntmere. When the couple tried to flee into the building, the women followed them in and assaulted the girlfriend.

Crivelli said the incident just highlights that the site is nothing but trouble and he wants Austintown to be done with it.

“We’ve had nothing but problems there, and he actually had three bites at the apple — the original approval, the stay by the magistrate and then post-COVID,” he said.

Crivelli said he’s aware that the rezoning could be perceived as taking the property in a sense, but he said that if a legitimate business plan is brought forward, the township can always approve a new conditional use permit.

For now, it is a matter of keeping the property from becoming a problem again.

“It’s not a nuisance right now. There’s no valid occupancy permit to operate anything there,” he said.

Crivelli said that the trustees’ support of the motion on Monday means there will be hearings with Mahoning County Planning Commission and Austintown Zoning Commission, and then the board of trustees will have the final decision on what to do.

BRIAN’S STORY

Van Dusen said he has no problem with Crivelli’s proposed rezoning, or any problem with Crivelli himself, but said some details are missing from the story.

“I’ve never had any plans to open up a bottle club, and I am not going to open one,” he said. “There’s no activity there now and there is not going to be.”

At least not for the foreseeable future.

Van Dusen said he takes responsibility for the problems the Zodiac caused, but said he was not operating the business.

“In 2022, I was stepping away from the entertainment business,” he said. “I was transferring the business to a family friend and I was working on a different business venture.”

Van Dusen said he was going to sell his lease at the building to that party if they were successful.

He said the sub-leased club, called Spot at the Zodiac, failed to obtain a liquor permit and so opened a bottle club instead. As soon as he found out that they were causing problems, he closed it down.

“I thought they were good people, and I was wrong. I’m the one who has to own that,” he said. “When you’re dealing with street people, that’s what you end up with. I made a big mistake.”

Van Dusen said the cleaning Christian and his girlfriend were doing was necessary largely because the building was broken into and heavily vandalized after he changed the locks.

He said that he wants to work with Crivelli and the township to use the building for different purposes and is working on a business plan for a professional office setting, but nothing is ready for submission to the zoning office yet.

“If and when I have something, whatever I do, it will be legitimate and it will go through the approval processes with zoning, police, fire, everybody,” Van Dusen said. “I’m an honest businessman and I’m all about putting safety and the community first.”

Alexander did not respond to a request for comment.