The Denver City Council unanimously postponed voting on a bill that would rewrite the city’s nightclub rules for the first time in decades, citing an early morning shooting at a club in southeast Denver that left one person dead and eight injured.
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“I would just like to have additional information and provide us a few more days additionally for us to be able to learn more about how this would impact what happened,” said Councilwoman Diana Romero-Campbell, who was elected earlier in the night as the council’s new president.
The ordinance, a proposal from the city’s Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, would streamline the city’s permitting structure for nightclubs and adult entertainment establishments. It would also allow clubs to remain open until 4 a.m., two hours beyond the state-mandated cutoff of alcohol sales.
Two councilmembers planned to propose amendments to the bill on Monday, and council members said they would also like to have more time to consider those possible changes before they vote. Romero-Campbell emphasized she wanted more time to hear how the ordinance would impact incidents like the shooting.
The DLCP is in the process of investigating the early morning shooting, executive director Molly Duplechian said.
“I think there’s a lot of improved and enhanced safety provisions in this proposal,” she told the council. “While this incident occurred and there’s nothing we can do to go back and change that, what we’re hoping is that a lot of these safety provisions will give us increased tools to react when something like this happens.”
The mass shooting took place just outside a southeast Denver nightclub called the Ultra Lounge East just after midnight Monday morning.
The shots fired outside of the club appeared to involve at least two shooters and followed a confrontation between two groups at an event billed as a community water fight in Aurora earlier on Sunday, Denver police said. That earlier dispute started up again at an afterparty hosted at the lounge, Chief Ron Thomas said in a news briefing.
As of Monday morning, all eight of the people who were injured in the shooting were in “serious but stable” condition, Thomas said.
Paramedics took a ninth victim, a man who officials haven’t yet identified, to the hospital before he died.
Some councilmembers, including Councilwomen Jamie Torres and Flor Alvidrez, said they likely wouldn’t support the bill without major changes related to concerns they had ahead of the Ultra Lounge shooting.
The council will now consider the bill and any amendments at its Aug. 3 meeting.
Denver Post reporters Shelly Bradbury and Lauren Penington contributed to this story.
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