NORFOLK, Va. — The doors at 436 Granby Street are closed for good.
"One of the hardest decisions we've ever had to make," Al Ragas told 13News Now on Friday. "For me, it was my first venture, so this was our baby."
This week, co-owners of Scotty Quixx on Granby, Al Ragas and Chris Johnson, announced on Facebook that the longtime Downtown Norfolk nightclub is officially closed.
The announcement comes after a months-long, and still ongoing, legal fight by Ragas and Johnson to reopen the bar after Norfolk City Council voted revoke its special exception permit, which allowed them to operate as a nightclub.
City leaders raised issues with alleged discrepancies in the business' meal and beverage tax reporting, which Ragas and Johnson have repeatedly pushed back on.
"With the MBAR Reports, they said they were different, so we had to be doing something wrong. We explained the differences to city attorneys, and tried to city council, but I don’t think they were really listening. The difference came between what we actually collected after discounts. That’s what we reported to city, showing them, ‘Hey, we sell a hamburger for $10 but made $5 because of discount, that’s what we paid taxes on to the city,'" Ragas said.
Scotty Quixx is one of several businesses in the downtown corridor which went through a permit revocation hearing before city council, following several violent incidents in the downtown area including a quadruple shooting outside of Legacy Restaurant and Lounge in the summer of 2022.
Friday, Ragas said he still feels as though his business got swept up in the efforts to clean up downtown, and that the allegations raised against Scotty Quixx had never been an issue since the beginning of Johnson and Ragas' ownership.
Ragas added that the lawsuit filed against the city, in an attempt to recoup the financial damages they say are caused by the revoked permit, is not close and on the table.
For the moment, though, Ragas and Johnson are looking to reopen an establishment in a neighboring city.
"We felt that no matter what we were going to do, the city wouldn’t welcome us back. No sense in waiting because we have to pay the lease, we couldn’t just continue having this open checkbook for a place the city wouldn’t allow us to come back in," he said.
Ragas adds that the permit revocation has put ownership at a financial disadvantage, making their push to reopen some kind of establishment all the more important.
“We signed up for the economic disaster relief fund, got the money, and used the money to pay for our employees, pay for taxes to keep the doors open. The heartbreak is, we’re still on the hook for that $380,000.”