Sides Queue Up in Fight Over Pool Hall : Zoning: A hearing is planned on Q’s licensing. Owners say patrons are well-behaved, but critics say business attracts rowdy customers.

Call it “A Tale of Two Businesses.”

One is a cheery, upscale restaurant and pool hall catering responsibly to a clean-cut clientele on a busy commercial strip. The other is a bar masquerading as a restaurant, specializing in making young people drunk, rowdy and dangerous late at night in a quiet residential neighborhood.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles’ Board of Zoning Appeals will decide which is the real Q’s Billiard Club, and whether it can continue to conduct business.

Q’s lost the first round in its fight for survival when James Crisp, a city zoning administrator, ruled in March that the establishment should not be granted the conditional use permit it needs to continue serving alcohol and operating pool tables.

Located at 11835 Wilshire Blvd., Q’s has drawn contradictory reviews from residents of its Brentwood neighborhood since it opened two years ago this month. With its yuppie variation on the traditional pool hall theme, the venture enjoyed immediate success, but it also generated a rash of complaints from neighbors.

Q’s owners, David Houston, Yossi Kviatkovsky and Avi Fattal, contend that they dealt with the noise and traffic problems in their first few months of operation. According to them, the only problem since then has been Taylor Burke.

Burke, whose apartment faces the alley behind Q’s, has led a campaign to deny the club it’s conditional use permit.

“I think he really enjoys doing this,” Houston said. “It gives him a certain power over people’s lives.”

Each side will arrive at City Hall on Tuesday with extensive documentation, much of it aimed at disproving the other’s claims. Each side will say it is supported by the vast majority of the neighborhood, and will produce signatures to prove it. Each side will accuse the other of lying and trying to coerce neighbors into making unfounded charges.

As evidence of the problems created by Q’s, Burke, president of the Goshen Neighborhood Assn., offers a slew of photographs--of a young man urinating in an apartment garage below a “No Trespassing” sign; of what he contends is a drug deal in the alley; of Q’s employees allegedly violating their own policies against allowing people to exit into the alley or park there late at night. He also produces letters of complaint from dozens of neighbors.

A man whom he asked to keep quiet once pointed a gun at him, Burke said, and some of his neighbors have been similarly threatened.

“If they want to accuse me of being the organizer of the opposition--hey, guilty,” Burke said. “But it’s not just me.”

In fact, other people in the neighborhood have voiced similar complaints.

Michael Nevesky said he and his wife, Mitch, have found beer bottles “on our lawn, on the street, everywhere” since the pool hall opened.

“They come past our building shouting until past 2 in the morning,” Nevesky said. “Somebody was passed out on my lawn one night.”

Apartment manager Doris Sugerman said she has had to hire someone one or two days a week just to clear bottles left by Q’s patrons.

“Their problem is, their basic business is getting people drunk,” said William Adams, whose apartment, like Burke’s, faces the alley.

In a community where parking is scarce under the best of circumstances, customers of boulevard businesses clog the residential side streets north and south of Wilshire.

The owners of Q’s say that they are getting blamed for problems caused by patrons of several other restaurants and two supermarkets that are within two blocks of their business. Several of the restaurants serve alcohol and at least one, like Q’s, stays open until 2 a.m.

“This is Wilshire Boulevard,” Houston said. “This is not some quiet residential street.”

He described Q’s as a good neighbor that goes out of its way to accommodate residents, has a security guard patrolling the block on a bicycle and holds charity fund-raising events.

Houston produced a city Planning Department memo stating that there were complaints about noise and traffic in the alley in 1988, a year before Q’s opened.

“For us to be put out of business and lose everything we own now is unbelievable,” he said.

On April 23, in an incident that could not have been more ill-timed for the restaurant, a gunman fired several rounds from a semiautomatic rifle into a Q’s employee’s car parked in the alley.

The Los Angeles Police Department has recommended denial of the permit, citing 66 reported crimes at the restaurant in 1989 and 1990. Co-owner Kviatkovsky said most of the reports were unfounded and did not result in any enforcement action.

Sgt. Fred Tuller of the Police Department’s West Los Angeles Division said that Q’s has been cited for overcrowding and that there have been incidents of minors’ being served alcohol. Tuller said he believes Q’s is no worse than many other night spots, but causes trouble because of its location.

“The business area is immediately adjacent to residential, and there isn’t enough parking,” Tuller said. “It becomes a problem when people are leaving at 1 or 2 in the morning, especially when they’ve been drinking.”

The most important opinion Tuesday may belong to someone who is unlikely even to attend the hearing: Marvin Braude, the city councilman who represents the area.

Braude sent his chief deputy, Cindy Miscikowski, to speak in favor of Q’s at the March hearing before Crisp. But the councilman may be having second thoughts. Since the first hearing, Miscikowski said, “we’ve been hearing much more thoroughly from the people in opposition.”

Miscikowski said she expected to appear before the appeals panel, but did not know what position she would take.

Although she declined to be drawn into the war of words between Q’s owners and their neighbors, Miscikowski said the restaurant’s proximity to residences was bound to be a source of friction.

“It’s just not a good mix, there’s no question,” she said.