After facing the possibility of having his business permit revoked, Downtown Experiment’s owner said he has begun putting together a local business coalition to unite several of downtown Riverside’s nightlife owners.
“When you have a group of people, I think that’s where the power comes in, that’s where the ideals come in,” Marco McGuire, the owner of Downtown Experiment, said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “We [want to] come together for what’s best for the city of Riverside and what’s best for the operators.”
McGuire decided to create the alliance — which is still in the early development stage — after last month’s Riverside Planning Commission hearing to decide whether to revoke his club’s permit following several noise complaints and dozens of police reports over the years.
At the hearing, McGuire’s attorney refuted several of the police reports and explained the business had already worked to course-correct after being made aware of other incidents. The commission ultimately voted 7-1 to delay its decision to June 4 to allow for time for staff to consider alternatives to revoking the business permit. Vice Chair Brian Baird voted against the motion, and Commissioner Raj Singh was absent.
McGuire, who has founded several downtown businesses, said at the meeting he was open to working with the city to showcase his efforts to improve his most recent business venture. Since then, he told The Riverside Record that he’s made several big changes to Downtown Experiment, like installing a metal detector, requiring his security team to wear body cameras and adding protective measures against drink-spiking.
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He said it was his hope that the hospitality alliance would allow the bar owners to share new techniques, tools and information while also holding one another accountable. The coalition, he said, might also be able to coordinate events to bring more patrons to the city’s nightlife hub.
“We’re talking to probably over a dozen of operators, and they’re all very positive and very engaged,” McGuire said. “We need to let the city know that we could do a great nightlife. They don’t need to look at it like a nuisance.”
If everything goes according to plan, McGuire said, he expects the coalition to officially launch by the end of this year.
At least eight local bars and restaurant owners have spoken with McGuire about the proposal, he said. One of the owners, who declined to be directly quoted in this story, told The Record he had spoken with McGuire about the proposal and looked forward to joining the coalition once it was created. Many of the owners already communicate with one another, he added, and saw this as an opportunity to legitimize that connection.
Councilmember Philip Falcone, who represents the downtown area, also said he was supportive of the idea. Falcone said he and his staff regularly have meetings with business owners through an already-existing coalition called the Riverside Downtown Partnership.
However, during his tenure on council, he said the meetings had not been well attended by several of the bar owners, possibly due to their non-business hour schedules.
“We probably haven’t had the best overall communication as we should have had in the past,” Falcone said. “So this might be an effort to correct some of those things overall.”
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