A Denver sports bar that faced losing its license after its employees were accused of prostitution settled with the city last week and will remain open — for now.
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Mecca Sports Bar, 2915 W. Mississippi Ave., was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, and its employees will have to complete specialized training with the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking as part of the settlement, according to an order from the Denver Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. The business, which sits in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, started a one-year probationary period when the settlement was signed on Wednesday.
If any other laws, rules or regulations are violated at Mecca Sports Bar during that time, the bar will close for 30 days and could lose its license, according to the settlement agreement.
Women working at Mecca routinely offered customers in and outside the bar sex for money, and would overcharge the customers for profit, according to a show-cause order submitted by city officials in February.
The young women would offer the men “off-premise bottle service,” where they would leave with the customer, be dropped back at the bar later that night and be paid by the bar manager, the order claimed. Undercover officers were approached by one of the employees, who later admitted that others were involved, city officials said in the order.
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“(Mecca) shall not permit any person, regardless of whether they are a patron or employee, to sell beverages or food items for a higher price than the price listed the item is advertised at in exchange for that person’s company while on the licensed premises,” a new addition to the bar’s license stipulated in the settlement reads.
Mecca Sports Bar’s owner and attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Roughly 90% of business licensing discipline cases in Denver end in a settlement agreement, said Eric Escudero, director of communications for the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, in an email to The Denver Post. The goal is to get businesses to comply with the law, he said.
“Only in the worst circumstances or repeated violations of law does the city take the steps to revoke a business license that would result in a business shutting down,” Escudero said.
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