Billy Dean's appeals cabaret decision

Billy Dean, who’s quest to occupy 3500 Sunrise Highway in Wantagh has repeatedly been rejected, will make one last-ditch effort to save his cause.
Dean, who owns Billy Deans Showtime Cafe’ in Bellmore, was most recently turned down by the New York State Appellate Division on Feb. 13. The ruling stated that the Hempstead Town Board of Zoning Appeals’ ruling was neither “unreasonable nor irrational. We decline to disturb it.”
After initially accepting Billy Dean’s application, the BZA reversed its decision in August of 2011 after residents voiced concerns with Dean’s other location, the Showtime Café’ in Bellmore, which many identify as a strip club.
“This board finds that, in as much as the applicant has effectively misled this board as the nature of the entertainment to be offered at this proposed new cabaret, not only did this board have sufficient grounds to direct a rehearing, but the applicant has no grounds to not assert that it had relied in good faith on the resolutions issued by the board, in turn, had relief on Mr. Dean’s less than candid and incomplete presentation,” stated the Findings of Fact issued by the BZA.
Dean’s attorney William Cohn argued, “You can’t make up the rules as you go along. You may regulate land use but you do not have the right to tell someone how to run their business.”

Another concern for the BZA was the advertising of the proposed location on the Bellmore property’s website, which promotes a 6-minute lap dance, hot oil massages and describes itself as Long Island’s number one strip club.
“I am an entertainer,” Dean said in May of 2012. “This will have a Las Vegas-style show — dancers, jugglers, aerial acts.” He argued that the website marketing was used to bring Bellmore customers to the new location.
“The applicant’s choice to advertise this proposed facility on its website, without any statement to distinguish the proposed location from such obvious adult fare, it is clearly evident to this board, that, without “explicitly topless, bottomless or nude” entertainment, it is clear Mr. Dean’s wholly conclusory rubric of ‘Las Vegas-style showroom, coupled with the admitted fact that he intends to limit entrance to minors by reason of age that the occupant has failed to meet his burden that this proposed cabaret will not fall within the category of “adult entertainment” and will not have a negative impact on property values, and therefore forbidden at this location within 500 feet of a residential district,” they said.

Do you think Billy Dean’s should be approved or denied for Wantagh? Email 300 words or less to mganci@liherald.com