NORFOLK, Va. — One chapter is closed, but the ending is still unwritten for at least one downtown Norfolk business.
The owners of Legacy Restaurant & Lounge are looking at the next steps after ending a court appeal to reopen the nightclub months after Norfolk City Council voted to revoke their conditional use permit.
Marcus Calabrese, the club's publicist with Capital Image Group, told 13News Now all options are on the table when it comes to what Legacy owners Warren Salvodon and Alex Stokes will do moving forward.
“Just because things didn’t go the way they should’ve gone here, doesn’t mean they won’t somewhere else," Calabrese said.
Those possibilities include trying to make a new venture work at the current but still-shuttered location on Plume Street, moving the nightclub to another location somewhere else in Hampton Roads or establishing a new business altogether.
City leaders cited safety issues on the night of August 5 when Norfolk police say a confrontation inside the nightclub led to Tyshawn Gray shooting at a crowd of people outside Legacy.
To this day, the owners said they feel they complied as best they could with the chaotic situation they were tasked to handle that night, and have pushed back on the claims raised by Norfolk City Council to revoke the establishment's permit.
“It started with the only issue was a lack of security, and Legacy proved that wasn’t the case. Then it was 'There wasn’t marked security’, and they proved that wasn’t the case," Calabrese said.
Earlier this fall, Legacy regained access to its own security footage retrieved by Norfolk Police Department after they said it disappeared from their servers.
However, citing that they're a "small business with a small business budget", Calabrese said Salvodon and Stokes were unable to indefinitely contest the revocation through the court process.
“To decide to change the business model because of something they couldn’t control, that’s a tough decision," Calabrese said.
This is only the latest chapter in a months-long saga by Norfolk's city leaders to regulate the city’s downtown district.
Around the corner on Granby Street, the owners of Scotty Quixx also wonder what's next after a judge denied a request for preliminary injunctive relief over the city’s decision to revoke their permit.
Their attorneys told 13News Now a judge granted leave to amend their lawsuit and "state additional allegations to attempt to show we had standing."
But for Legacy’s ownership, it’s on to the next chapter.
“They tried to do the right thing here, tried to do good business, tried to be compliant, they tried to fight for their business in the court of law. It didn’t work out, but they know the whole world isn’t like that," Calabrese said.