By Kate E. Salute
Norton immediately contacted the New York State Liquor Authority to find out the name. What she discovered was that the old Elks Lodge was slated to become the site of G Spot Lounge LLC. She quickly started e-mailing residents, telling them how they could help in getting the liquor authority to deny the lounge a license.
The information was given to Cathedral Gardens Civic Association President Scott Jablow, who in turn distributed it to Cathedral Gardens residents.
The e-mail, with the subject line, ³Can it be the Café Wandy¹s of the 21st Century?² reminds residents of ³vivid memories² of the infamous establishment, and goes on to say that it would be ³prudent to try to stop the issuance of the license to operate a bar at this location.²
Café Wandyful opened on Hempstead Turnpike in the late 1990s, before the WHCA existed and when the Cathedral Gardens Civic Association was still young. The establishment was proposed to the CGCA at its second meeting by owner Wandy Williams, a Malverne High School alumnus, former Long Beach basketball coach and former Denver Broncos football player.
Jablow recalled Williams saying that Café Wandyful would be like a TGI Fridays, a neighborhood dining establishment. ³We didn¹t, and still don¹t, have any place like a TGI Fridays around here,² Jablow said, ³so we told him that if this is really what he wanted to bring to the area, we would support him 1,000 percent as long as he didn¹t lie to us. He guaranteed there would be no live entertainment.²
But, Norton says, the restaurant quickly morphed into a cabaret, with live entertainment that boomed at all hours of the night, with crowds spilling into the streets and the nearby neighborhood, creating big problems. ³There were people urinating in public, others noisily wandering down the residential streets,² Norton said.
Jablow added that Café Wandyful sometimes closed portions of Hempstead Turnpike to run a valet service for which it had no permit.
After about a year and a half, the CGCA took the initiative to close Wandy¹s by hiring an attorney and a special investigator who took secret footage of the live entertainment going on inside the club as well as the debauchery they alleged took place outside. About six months later, after Town of Hempstead officials had seen the tapes and offered their support to the community, Wandy¹s West Hempstead location closed. It eventually reopened, however, on Franklin Avenue in Hempstead.
The hope of both civic associations is that they can pre-empt the G Spot from opening in the first place. ³And G Spot Lounge certainly has different connotations than that of a sports bar,² Norton said.
³Café Wandyful, at least it made sense, the owner¹s name was Wandy, it was a play on words,² Jablow said, ³G Spot Lounge, though ‹ I know the building department has suggested a change in name.²
Town of Hempstead spokeswoman Michelle Sparaccio said that the owners of G Spot Lounge LLC filed for a public assembly license on March 22. No permit has been issued or can be issued before the establishment goes before the Board of Zoning Appeals to get a variance on the use of the building, a process that Sparaccio says could take anywhere from four to six months unless it is expedited. ³We¹re being very prudent in the matter,² Sparaccio said. She added that her understanding, after a conversation with the building department, is that the G Spot Lounge is to be an Indian restaurant.
Harvey Arya, the manager of the Samrat Bar and Grill at 221 Hempstead Turnpike, across from the lounge, said that he has delivered food to the downstairs portion of the building and had a conversation with a woman said to be one of the owners. ³I¹m not worried yet,² Arya said, ³The clever Indian girl said that it was going to be a modern-style bar and lounge.²
The second floor of the old Elks Lodge is already in use as the headquarters of Sigma Transportation Inc., an ambulette service for wheelchair transportation. Sigma¹s office manager, Niraj Ahuja, said the business has been in the location for about a month, and that there have been people working sporadically below, though a small window by the building¹s staircase revealed only ladders and buckets of unopened paint, and no signs of renovation.
Despite three visits to the site, the owners of the G Spot Lounge LLC could not be reached for comment.
Comments about this story? KSalute@liherald.com or (516)569-4000 ext. 205.
