15 hours Ago
COLUMBIA — Patrons of Jay’s Bar and Grill in The Vista might need to find a different drinking spot for a while if the state has its way. The bar is waiting on a judge to rule whether it will have to stop serving alcohol for a 45-day period and pay a $1,500 fine to the state Department of Revenue. Since opening in January 2023 , Jay’s has received dozens of violations for allowing people under 21 to enter and buy alcohol in the bar.
That's according to attorneys and law enforcement officers who spoke and testified Oct. 29 at a South Carolina Administrative Court hearing. “This is a troubled location,” attorney Dana Krajak, representing the Department of Revenue, said at the hearing.
“By its design it’s an underaged bar. They’ve been unwilling to work with law enforcement, they’ve locked them out, they’re unwilling to listen to them, they’re unwilling to implement safety procedures.” The Department of Revenue first began seeking to revoke the bar’s liquor license in March.
Attorneys representing the bar say the problems have since been addressed. “These aren't issues where they're not doing everything they can possibly do to mitigate and deter those events from occurring,” attorney John Alphin, representing the bar and owner Jay Kalin, said at the hearing. “ Just like in Five Points , every once in a while, these things are going to happen.
” The Gervais Street bar has been the site of accounts of rampant underaged drinking, police being called to respond to fights and a hesitance from the bar’s owner and staff to assist law enforcement – all of which were referenced in the Oct. 29 court proceedings. The incident which received the most attention in the courtroom was a Dec.
13, 2023, SLED operation to test the establishment's security measures. An underaged informant was sent into the bar with their real ID, SLED agent Kirkland Paturzo, who led the operation, told the court. The underaged informant was granted entrance into Jay’s without having her I.
D. scanned, as is required by state regulation, Paturzo said. A bar employee visually inspected the ID after the informant had entered the bar and allowed her to stay even though it accurately showed her age as 19 and was of the vertical orientation used for underaged state driver’s licenses, Paturzo said.
The informant then was sold a Michelob Ultra beer at the bar without having her ID checked by the bartender, in full view of another SLED agent sitting next to the informant, Paturzo said. That violation was the third SLED had issued the bar in 10 months, Paturzo said. Other underaged informants had also been able to buy alcohol at the bar prior to the December incident, she said.
Since the bar opened in January 2023, SLED has issued around 80 citations for minors in possession of alcohol or fake IDs, and the agency has received over a dozen complaints against the establishment, she said. Jay’s has committed “way more violations” than other locations in Richland County, she said. Columbia Police Department investigator Michael Crowley said the bar is oriented toward a mostly college and sometimes high school-aged crowd more so than other bars in the city.
The police department has been called to the bar for reports of overcrowding and physical altercations, he added. But Jay’s attorney Alphin told the court the business has implemented several changes since the Dec. 13 incident and the state’s move to suspend the bar’s liquor license in March.
The bar’s owner does not deny the violations occurred, but the business has been “a model citizen” since March 2024, Alphin told the court. “We absolutely own that we made a mistake,” Alphin said. “There's no doubt that this establishment, for the first year of his life, had a very checkered past, had a very difficult time getting off the ground.
” Since March, the bar has purchased more robust ID scanners, installed more security cameras, overhauled staff training and began issuing wristbands to patrons denoting they are over 21, Alphin and Jay’s general and security managers said in court. The bartender who served the underaged informant and the doorman who let her in the bar in December have both since been fired, Jay’s general manager Michael Hyland said. DOR and SLED confirmed no violations had been issued against the bar since March 2024, but around 40 individuals there had been written tickets for underaged drinking and use of a fake ID in that period.
“It has quieted down a little bit, but we’ve still responded to that location,” Crowley said. The Department of Revenue and law enforcement officers said the bar still hasn’t done enough to stop the underaged drinking. “If they’re using this scanner, and they’re doing what they say they’re doing, this stuff wouldn’t (still) be happening,” Krajak said.
Owner Kalin has signed off more control to the bar’s managers since the state threatened to revoke the liquor license in March, Alphin said. Kalin did not attend the Oct. 28 hearing.
“Before Mr. Kalin ran this place with an iron fist, didn’t allow the managers to do what they needed to do,” Alphin said. “Now, he understands that the managers need to have their duties, or have the responsibility to take on ownership of their positions in order to make sure that these violations don't occur and they haven't occurred.
” Kalin, who gained local notoriety as the owner of Jay’s Vape and Wellness Center vape store near the University of South Carolina campus on Gadsden Street, was also accused by law enforcement officials of being uncooperative in their investigations at the bar. Kalin shouted at SLED agents and followed them throughout the bar when they made regularly scheduled visits and follow ups to complaints filed with the agency, Paturzo said. Alphin did not respond to the accusations against Kalin of being uncooperative with law enforcement at the hearing.
Instead of the $1,500 fine and 45-day liquor license suspension, Alphin asked the court to charge the restaurant a $25,000 fee. If the court upholds the Department of Revenue’s 45-day suspension, the restaurant would prefer the period begin in late December when the mostly college-aged staff go home at the end of the semester, Alphin said. The bar was charged almost $2,000 in penalties to the Department of Revenue for violations including instances where alcohol was sold to an underaged customer between February and May of 2023, according to department records.
That doesn’t include tickets written by Columbia PD or SLED. DOR’s attorney Krajak argued the larger fine was still not enough in comparison to the lost revenue of the 45-day suspension and that the bar could have made the post-March changes before any of the preceding violations. “It’s like shutting the doors to the barn after the cows have left,” Krajak said.
The penalty sought against Jay's by DOR is consistent with a fourth alcohol-related violation, according to department documents . A fifth violation would see a liquor license revoked. The judge presiding over the case, Robert Reibold, did not issue a ruling at the hearing.
Alphin told a reporter he estimated a decision could take two to four months. The bar’s current liquor license is up for renewal on Nov. 12, according to the Department of Revenue’s online database .
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