NORFOLK, Va - Scott Oates owns the building where Scotty Quixx is located, and he's the landlord for Scotty Quixx which has been in downtown Norfolk for 20 years. The nightclub was forced to shut down after the Norfolk City Council voted to revoke its conditional use permit earlier this week.
Scotty Quixx is the latest empty storefront in downtown Norfolk and the third business on Granby Street forced to shut down.
Oates said empty storefronts will not only impact him but the entire downtown district.
"From a landlord perspective, if there are a bunch of vacancies downtown, that’s going to be a really tough thing to re-rent," he said. "It’s going to have a real economic impact on me financially. It’s also going to be really hard for other businesses to come down there."
Oates says it impacts the entire economic state of downtown.
"It decreases my property value immediately," Oates said. "It's not just the property owners. It's not just the business owners, it’s the people that work there too. We have a guy, Tony McCow, who we hired after we opened in downtown Norfolk. Tony started off as a dishwater. He got promoted to a cook and now he’s the main chef. He’s been working there for twenty."
Scotty Quixx is the fourth downtown restaurant and bar forced to shut down. Scotty Quixx nor California Burrito had any reports of violence as reasons for getting their permit revoked.
Legacy Lounge and Culture Nightclub were also forced to shut down. The city says Legacy was in violation because they did not have uniformed security during the night of a shooting when four people were shot outside the lounge. As for Culture Nightclub, Norfolk’s Assistant Attorney says there were more than 160 calls to police involving culture in 2021.
"New Orleans, cities like Miami, they operate just fine. They don’t go shutting down restaurants just because there is crime in the city. They beef up the police presence," Oates said.
News 3 asked former Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone, who is also News 3's law enforcement analyst, if cracking down on businesses would deter crime downtown.
"Will it have any impact on crime downtown? I think it will. But those results would be so small," he said. "They won’t be measurable because of the number of incidents that have happened downtown," Boone said.
Downtown Norfolk is considered the hub of entertainment for Hampton Roads.
"I think the city is doing the best that it can to address crime downtown," Boone said. "Let's speak facts—downtown is a revenue generator, and just like any other city, they are going to do as much as they can to protect that interest."
