Fresh Loaf

Michael Gidewon plans to open nightclubs in May

The first week of May.

That’s when Midtowners can expect a still-unnamed — but already notorious — pair of nightclubs to open for business on Peachtree Street across from the Federal Reserve Bank.

Earlier today, the Gidewons, the first family of Atlanta nightlife, won a decisive victory when the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustment denied a request that the issuance of a special administrative permit for the clubs be reconsidered.

Even Peggy Denby, who, as president of the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance, has been one of the Gidewons’ most vocal opponent, concedes, “I expect that they’ll get to occupy the club space.”

The fight over the clubs had simmered for more than a year before the issue erupted last summer in a series of contentious community meetings. Opponents came out in force to criticize the Gidewons’ management of their previous Midtown venture, the Vision mega-club, and argue that the new clubs would bring noise, litter and crime to an area that now boasts residential high-rises. An anonymous website was launched to rally opposition and nearly 1,500 people signed an online petition against the clubs.

In the end however, the various local permitting boards agreed that owner Michael Gidewon had satisfied all the legal requirements to open his proposed clubs.

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Michael Gidewon

“Midtown’s future hangs in the balance.”

So claims a letter by the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance that urges Mayor Shirley Franklin and the city’s License Review Board to deny a liquor license application by nightclub impressario Michael Gidewon.

As you’ll recall from our Sept. 7 cover story and other news coverage, the Gidewon family is seeking to open a pair of 10,000-square-foot clubs on Peachtree Street in the shadow of the Loews luxury hotel now under construction and catty-corner from the 1010 Midtown condo tower.

Joined by older brother Alex and three siblings, Gidewon has been the force behind the mega-clubs Vision, Compound and the Velvet Room.Many surrounding neighbors and business owners have loudly denounced the new clubs for weeks now, persuading the Midtown Neighbors’ Association and NPU-E to officially oppose them. The final showdown comes Tuesday, Oct. 6, before the License Review Board. If the LRB recommends denial and Franklin confirms that stance, then the Gidewon’s only recourse would be a lawsuit — which, I believe would be very difficult to win.

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The proposed nightclub as it now looks

There was another public meeting last night about the proposal to reopen the Vision nightclub in the old Cotton Club space on Peachtree Street and the AJC reports that the neighbors no likee.

We’d reported last week that the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance was trying to organize opposition and now it appears that someone with access to a bunch of random clip art has launched a new website, www.keepmidtownsafe.com. It doesn’t have much content yet, but it does have an online petition that’s collected about 300 names and it lists the next public showdown, a meeting of the Midtown Development Review Committee next Tuesday, Aug. 11 in the 999 Peachtree building. Battle stations, everyone!

(Photo swiped from keepmidtownsafe.com)

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After a three-year run as Atlanta’s nightclub of choice for ballers, b-boys and high-rollers, Vision served its last Red Bull and vodka on Aug. 5, 2006. The fabled VIP haven for everyone from P. Diddy to Britney Spears to many of the now-jailed principals behind the BMF drug-trafficking empire, the glitzy club effectively shifted operations to the sprawing (and now-shuttered) Compound, on the city’s Westside, then moved the party up to the Velvet Room on the northern Perimeter.

Since then, the only noise on that stretch of Peachtree Street, between 10th and 12th streets, has been the sound of construction equipment.

But the Gidewon brothers — the four press-shy siblings from Eritrea who rule Atlanta’s hip-hop nightlife — plan to change all that.

After months of community speculation, brother Michael has embarked on the application process to reopen Vision in the strip of buildings on Peachtree that once housed the old Cotton Club and Pasta Da Pulcinella locations. From the outside, the windowless buildings appear vacant and dilapidated. But, according to sources, the club interior is enormous and was built out nearly a year ago to the Gidewon’s trademark spare-no-expense standards.

Now that the Gidewons have finally filed for their permits, at least one civic group is determined to see they don’t get them.

“We don’t want the loud music, cruising, litter and shootings that go with this type of club,” says Peggy Denby, president of the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance. “We’re going to oppose this very loudly.”

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