A downtown Baltimore bar has continued operating under-21 college nights despite a 2006 cease-and-desist agreement with the city’s liquor board, records show.
Iguana Cantina, a nightclub on the corner of Lombard Street and Market Place, one block from the Inner Harbor, agreed in July 2006 to stop having under-21 patrons in exchange for the mitigation of a $1,000 fine by the Baltimore City Board of Liquor License Commissioners.
However, as recently as last week, the bar had advertised college nights on Thursdays with a $12 cover charge with a college ID for an open bar and “sodas and juice for 18 to 20.”
The bar made a verbal agreement with the board in 2006, which then consisted of different commissioners, said Stephan Fogleman, current head of the city board. But the agreement was never entered into official record, or made into a condition of the bar’s liquor license, he said.
“It’s my understanding that it was a gentlemen’s agreement,” Fogleman said. “This was not our board, this is [a previous] board, they agreed they would stop but [the board] didn’t make it part of the license.”
Attorney Peter Prevas, who represented Iguana Cantina license holders Cheryl Ann Adams and Walter Vaughan in the July 2006 proceeding, could not be reached for comment by press time.
The agreement was reached over charges brought against the license holders after a 20-year-old was arrested on drunken driving charges in January 2006 and told officers he had received alcohol at the bar. In a transcript of a decision entered in the case, then-Chairman Mark Fosler spelled out the agreement. Fosler still works as an inspector with the board.
“We mitigated that fine based on the fact that the licensee has agreed to stop doing under-21 promotions and having under-21 consumers and patrons as of August 17th [2006],” Fosler said in the transcript. “And we’re glad that’s going to happen.”
But because the condition was not formally made part of the license or explicitly agreed to on the record by Adams and Vaughan, “there’s nothing for us to enforce,” Fogleman said.
The board has focused on underage drinking and reports of violence in the area. Board inspectors have been to Iguana Cantina several times without reporting violations, but would continue to monitor the bar and its neighbors, Fogleman said.
“It’s a prominent place,” Fogleman said. “If something awful were to happen there, there would be devastating ripples across the city’s tourism industry.”
