Friday, March 16, 2007
The former site of the Men’s Room, the student-owned, student-run and student-aimed smoking lounge at 1606 23rd St., lies dormant with a “Now Leasing” sign in the window — but the business is far from dead, its owners say.
Co-owners Joe Scaglia and Patrick Stacy, Overland Park freshmen, said the business was turning a profit by its second month of operation, much to the surprise of many. Then the Men’s Room closed mid-January, before students arrived for the spring semester.
The business did not close because of a lack of revenue, but because of “misunderstandings” between the owners and the tenant of the building, said Phil Scaglia, Joe Scaglia’s father, who helped draw up the operating agreement with the tenant.
Joe Scaglia said many people who had spoken to him since the closing had assumed that he and Stacy had gone out of business.
“That wasn’t the case at all,” Scaglia said. “We were really rolling.”
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Joe Scaglia said the business tapped into a desire held by many students and young people in Lawrence: a place to go smoke indoors.
Phil Scaglia, who has owned and operated several restaurants in the past, also said the business was off to a great start. Now he is helping the owners search for a new location. He said they may choose to open near the Edwards Campus in Overland Park.
Phil Scaglia helped the owners with obtaining necessary business licenses, but he said the owners operated the business themselves.
He said the building’s tenant, Ben Wiedner, felt uncomfortable because the operating agreement required him to pay for utilities, insurance and upkeep costs, while the owners paid the building’s rent. Wiedner and Phil Scaglia eventually agreed to break off the agreement and vacate the building.
All the parties involved said the split was amicable, and no one was planning to take legal action.
Joe Scaglia said the business tapped into a desire held by many students and young people in Lawrence: a place to go smoke indoors. Because the city doesn’t allow smoking in restaurants or bars, and many living places don’t permit smoking indoors, many people are forced to go outside to smoke, he said.
“The motivation was basically just to slap Lawrence in the face,” Scaglia said. “They created a market for it when they made the smoking ban.”
The Men’s Room could allow smoking indoors and stay open as late as 4 a.m. because it did not sell food or alcohol, allowing it to bypass city codes affecting restaurants and bars.
The business’s revenue came from cover charges and sales of tobacco products. It also charged patrons by the hour to use one of five hookahs, which Stacy said were very popular.
Stacy said he and Joe Scaglia lost a significant amount of money with the closing, but that they were confident they could recoup their losses when they opened a new location. He said many property owners doubted that they could run a successful business, but he said the success of the Men’s Room had already proved many people wrong.
“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re just freshmen. You can’t do this,’ ” Stacy said.
Kansan staff writer Matt Erickson can be contacted at merickson@kansan.com.
— Edited by Kelly Lanigan
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