Robert Itzkow, attorney for Club Allure, speaks after a ruling by Cook County Chancery Court Jan 26. (Chronicle Media)

Even though a strip club next to a Stone Park convent has had its liquor license revoked by the Village of Stone Park, the club can continue to operate while business owners appeal the decision, according to a club spokesman.

Robert Itzkow, who identifies himself as an attorney for Club Allure at 3801-11 Lake St., said the club had 20 days to appeal the Nov. 11 decision by Stone Park’s liquor commissioner, Mayor Beniamino Mazzulla to the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. Even after an appeal is filed, Itzkow said, a liquor license continues to be valid while an appeal is taking place. If the ILCC appeals board upholds stripping the license from the club, Itzkow said the club is ready to sue in Cook County Circuit Court.

For now, the Melrose Park-based sisters of the Missionary Order of St. Charles Borromeo and their lawyers are relieved because the club is not operating. Itzkow said the club closed its doors for remodeling in late October. He did not give a date when the club would reopen.

The sisters’ convent grounds consist of five connected parcels, straddling the towns of Stone Park and Melrose Park. The convent property abuts the property line of Club Allure. Stone Park, population 5,000, is a one-square-mile town that surrounds a strip of Mannheim Road between North Avenue and Lake Street.

There are at least four other clubs advertising nude or topless dancing in Stone Park, including a new one that just opened as Allure was closing.

“We have to remodel to stay competitive with the brand new club that the mayor just approved after revoking our license,” Itzkow said.

Club Allure, registered under the name Stone Lake Partners, LLC, still has a valid liquor license which was set to expire Oct. 31, 2016, according to the ILCC license look-up on the state website.

Itzkow said Mazzulla first chose not to renew the club’s license, then issued a 13-page ruling saying the club was out of compliance with the town’s liquor ordinances because the boundary was within 100 feet of the property line of a “church.”

How to measure the 100-foot designation has been a sticking point for the club.

Members of the Missionary Order of St. Charles Borromeo leave the courtroom in Cook Co. chancery Court Jan. 26, 2016. (Chronicle Media)

The state Liquor Code’s measurement of the 100 feet marks the distance of the adult business’s property line to the edge of the building where religious services are held. The state code was written in 1979. Under that rule, the closest of the three convent chapels is more than 200 feet away from the property line, Itzkow said, so the license should be valid.

But the village’s liquor code, written later, does not specifically say how the measurement should be calculated, the mayor’s ruling said. The village now agrees to measure the distances between property lines of the nuns’ campus. Since the distance is “zero,” the license is revoked.

Itzkow said the mayor has renewed the license 13 times in the past.

“What’s different? What has changed?” he asked.

Itzkow claimed the mayor’s argument won’t stand up in court or under the Liquor Commission appeal. Itzkow said the mayor might be trying to gain political points for denying a license to Club Allure shortly before he’s up for re-election in April, 2017. The Chronicle was unable to make contact with Mazzulla for a comment.

Lawyers from Chicago’s Thomas More Society have represented the sisters since 2014.  A Cook County Chancery Court judge threw out the nuns’ first complaint, in January, 2016, but gave them leave to re-plead based on a claim the club is a nuisance. The amended complaint, filed in July, alleged that “investigators” found incidents of prostitution and violations of the liquor law. The next court date for that case is Dec. 20, said Tom Brejcha of Thomas More Society. The Village of Melrose Park is one of the plaintiffs in that suit, meaning neighboring town governments are pitted against each other.

For the liquor license complaint, Brejcha said the nuns had to find five residents who lived within 1,200 feet of the club to sign on.

“We had to convince them to sign under oath. Some of them are from Mexico and they were worried that their immigration status might be used against them,” Brejcha said. He said Mazzulla or the Village of Stone Park may have been targeting some of the plaintiffs when the village bought, for a very low price, some houses near the club that were in a flood plain.

“The mayor is not our friend that’s for sure,” Brejcha said.

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— Liquor licensed revoked, Stone Park strip club can still operate —