SALT LAKE CITY — Go to Plumhouse in Salt Lake City in the early weekend hours, and you’ll find music, dancing, maybe a fashion show or someone making papier-mache.
If you want to drink, says Plumhouse co-founder Thinh Doan, you need to bring it yourself. The club, which recently moved to the Granary District and typically operates weekends from about 11:30 p.m. to 5 a.m., is not licensed to sell booze.
“We run completely above board,” Doan told FOX 13 News in an interview Wednesday. “We try to show the police everything. We talk to the city council because we want a safe place for people that want this sort of arts scene.”
Some Salt Lake City staff, however, would like more regulations on after-hours clubs like Plumhouse — regulations that might put them out of business altogether. The topic came up in a September City Council discussion focusing on nuisances and public safety concerns.
But when FOX 13 News asked the Salt Lake City Police Department for crime statistics concerning the after-hours clubs, a spokesman said officers were not tracking any. Instead, he suggested filing a public records request with some parameters that might yield such numbers.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall provided some figures. For 2024, drunk and disorderly calls at non-residences — between 2-6 a.m. — increased 18% compared to the previous year.
Spokesman Andrew Wittenberg acknowledged those calls could not be isolated to the clubs. Wittenberg did point to real problems that did happen at an after-hours club called the New Yorker in downtown Salt Lake City in 2023. A police raid found drugs and at least one gun there.
But Doan and some members of the city council have expressed concern that problems at the New Yorker have been projected onto other clubs. Council Chair Chris Wharton on Tuesday told FOX 13 News that a planned discussion of new ordinances will be removed from next week’s agenda.
Instead, the council will form a subcommittee to look at the issue of the after-hours clubs.
“Public safety is the foremost concern,” Wharton said.
“However,” he added, “I want to make sure that ordinances that we pass are actually necessary to achieve that.”
“We don't want to trample the nightlife scene in Salt Lake,” Wharton continued. “We don't want to limit people's options, adults who want to go out and participate in lawful activities.”
Council Member Eva Lopez Chavez, whose District 4 includes downtown, said new ordinances are not necessary — the New Yorker showed how existing laws can be applied to problem clubs.
“There’s people today that want to take advantage of their personal liberties and their right to — quote, unquote — party from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.
“I’m not one of them,” Lopez Chavez said, adding that she’s usually in bed by 10 o’clock.
“But again,” she said, “I’m not interested in regulating the personal liberties of Salt Lakers.”
As for Doan, he and a partner incorporated Plumhouse as a nonprofit. That was in part so it could sell memberships that allow its patrons to attend events there.
He acknowledged there have been a few noise complaints, but said Plumhouse addressed that by turning down the bass. And its new location has thicker walls.
“I’m not sure what they have against us,” Doan said of people who want to regulate the after-hours clubs, “and maybe it looks weird for a bunch of young adults to be out between 2:00 and 5:00, but there hasn’t been any serious crime that has gone here.”