PT's Showclub to Close for Fourteen Days to Settle Prostitution Allegations With City

PT’s Showclub will close for two weeks in January after reaching a settlement with the city over alleged prostitution and public indecency at the strip club.

Business in the unassuming building at 1601 West Evans Avenue will pause from January 2 to January 15, as PT’s is required to shut its doors for fourteen days as a penalty for three admitted violations of city and state law related to soliciting or engaging in prostitution, according to a settlement order issued on Monday, November 27, by Molly Duplechian, executive director of the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses.

In July, Excise & Licenses issued an order to show cause after the Denver Police Department conducted a sting operation at the RCI Hospitality-owned strip joint on March 31 and found that the establishment had broken ten different laws at the state and local levels related to prostitution and public indecency. All but three of the charges were dropped as a result of the November 27 settlement.

After the DPD sting, the Denver City Attorney’s Office requested that Excise & Licenses pursue disciplinary action against PT’s, but on November 16, it sent Duplechian a letter asking her to consider certain conditions for a settlement agreement, most of which she applied.

The order to show cause says the investigation was spurred by an anonymous tip in January that “employees of PT’s Showclub were offering to perform sexual acts in exchange for money, and that the younger dancers were actively pressured into having sexual intercourse for money by older members of the club."

The City Attorney’s Office and the DPD have since conducted an investigation — including several undercover operations at the establishment — and have found that the allegations were not true, despite one undercover officer being offered sexual services in March.

“Nothing in the follow-up investigation (which included outreach attempts to current and former dancers) yielded any evidence linking the events which gave rise to this action with any of the Respondent’s owners or managers,” the City Attorney’s Office wrote in the November 16 letter to Duplechian. There also had been no new instances of prostitution-related legal breaches at the club since July.

Matthew Donelan is the manager of the club, which is owned by RCI Hospitality Holdings; PT's is one of the many nightclub brands currently operated by RCI.

The city will continue to monitor the property after the two-week closure in January, and if PT’s commits any licensing violations in the next year, it stands to have its liquor license suspended for up to twenty days.

If any violations related to prostitution occur in the next year, it could have its adult cabaret license revoked — for good.

The two dancers charged in the ongoing case are permanently banned from the premises.

There are now five conditions on PT's license: First, anyone performing security services must be licensed by Excise & Licenses. Second, all managers must complete a human trafficking awareness and prevention class. Third, anyone working at PT’s may not take personal effects such as purses, wallets or backpacks into any private dance area.

“According to DPD’s Vice Team, exotic dancers who engage in acts of prostitution will often bring their purses when they take a potential 'john' to the private dance area, as this gives them an easy way to store large sums of cash, condoms, and any other items necessary to facilitate the sale of sexual acts,” the City Attorney’s Office explained in its letter.

Fourth, PT’s must install video surveillance in all private dance areas. And fifth, it can’t make structural changes to the dance areas without the approval of Excise & Licenses. “On the date of offense, the private dance area consisted of individual rooms which were completely walled-off from floor to ceiling; as a result, this area was devoid of any meaningful surveillance, and the relative seclusion of these individual rooms created an ideal setting for illicit activity,” the City Attorney’s Office wrote to Duplechian.

After Duplechian’s July order, PT’s modified the private dance area to make it easier to observe what's going on there. The fifth licensing condition is designed to make sure those changes stick.

This isn’t the first time PT’s has run into controversy: Former owner Troy Lowrie, who sold the chain in 2021, was busted in a 2011 prostitution sting (the charges were later dropped). Dancers were also allegedly getting ripped off by an illegal system that charged them to perform and forced them to cover other employees' earnings out of tips they received.

However, the City Attorney’s Office noted in its letter that no such problems have occurred since RCI took over.

“This specific license has only been disciplined twice by the Department: once in 2016 for an underage alcohol sale, and once in 2020 for a violation of Denver’s COVID-19 public health orders,” it wrote. “Importantly, these two prior violations occurred while the business was under different ownership and management.”

In the late 1960s, the building in which the strip club is housed was home to Denver's short-lived but legendary music venue the Family Dog, which hosted such iconic acts as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead.

Dan Obarski, who worked with University of Denver professor Scott Montgomery to create The Tale of the Dog — a 2018 documentary about the short-lived venue — says the Family Dog was an early hub for things taken for granted in music today, like light shows and electronic effects.

“If you walk in there now," he says, "you would have no idea, because when you put in a strip club, it's all, like, black flooring and they build different level platforms."

While making the documentary, Obarski and his team took several former Family Dog managers and employees to PT’s Showclub. He jokes that he’s sure the dancers were mystified as to why everyone was marveling at the walls and structure rather than paying attention to their acts.

“You had people dancing to live music, and it was part of this new phenomenon,” Obarski says of the Family Dog. “There was this psychedelic aspect to it then. A psychedelic light show, which was one of the biggest light shows, if not the biggest. It's hard to verify something like that, but it's entirely possible it was the biggest light show, and psychedelic light show, in the world for a time.”

Obarski tells Westword that even then, the psychedelic elements of the Family Dog were too much for people, and the venue ran into pressure from the city to close. There is no such pressure now.

"The CAO recognizes that the severity of the allegations in this matter warrants a decisive response from the Director," the office wrote to Duplechian. "With that being said, the CAO feels that the terms of the proposed Settlement Agreement, including the five new conditions on the Respondent’s Tavern Liquor and Adult Cabaret License, are appropriate in light of the aforementioned mitigation, and will adequately prevent future violations of this nature."

PT’s is also close to resolving the public-nuisance case the City Attorney’s Office had filed based on the prostitution allegations. Lawyers for the club did not respond to a request for comment.