Empire for sale, owner ponders future
Updated at 5:03 PM
By Aldo Santin | Winnipeg Free Press
The owner of the troubled Empire Cabaret has put the Main Street club up for sale and is reconsidering plans to open another Main Street bar.
Sidney Soronow, lawyer for Sabino Tummillo, said the club owner has been unfairly blamed for the violence that struck the Empire Cabaret in October and November, adding the community’s unwillingness to deal with the growing violence downtown is the reason he’s getting out of the entertainment business.
“Sabino is re-evaluating the club situation until there is a greater commitment from the city of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Police Service to apply a little more energy to the problems in (the downtown) area,” Soronow said today.
Tummillo has turned down media requests since the stabbing death of Jeff Engen at the Empire Cabaret Nov. 18. Tummillo closed the club after the stabbing and it has not re-opened. Last week, Tummillo surrendered the club’s liquor license ahead of a planned hearing today by the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission.
The Empire was also the scene of an early-morning shooting Oct. 21, when a gunman, allegedly embroiled in a gang dispute, shot four innocent people. Winnipeg Police charged a man with that incident last week.
Soronow said Tummillo had been entertaining offers to sell the Empire Cabaret before the October and November events but added the outburst of violence coupled with an indifferent attitude from police and some community leaders to deal with the violence have convinced him to get out of the bar business.
Tummillo spent $1.5 million converting the former bank building into an upscale bar. It opened in early August 2001 and two weeks later he brought TV star and film actor Vincent Pastore — who played Big Pussy on The Sopranos — to mingle with bar guests.
Before opening the Empire Cabaret, Tummillo used to own the Chalet Hotel in St. Boniface and the Sabino’s Two for One pizza chain. Most recently, he bought the former Roca Jack’s Coffee House on Corydon Avenue and another former bank building on the other side of Main Street opposite the Empire, which he was planning to turn into another nightclub.
Soronow said that Tummillo increased security measures at the Empire club following the October shooting, adding that both the Winnipeg Police and the MLCC blame Tummillo for the stabbing death that occurred in November. Soronow said an MLCC inspection report said that Tummillo knew that gang members frequented the club and suggested that he was unwilling to deal with the appropriate security concerns.
Soronow said that Tummillo had repeatedly asked the Winnipeg Police Service for help in combating the gang problem, adding requests for police to identify known gang members and to let him hire uniformed off-duty officers as security were both rejected by police.
Soronow said the MLCC had issued a report to the Doer government Dec. 21 which acknowledged the problem caused by gang violence but concluded that dealing with the issue can’t be the sole responsibility of bar operators. Soronow said that within days of the MLCC stating the police have to work with bar operators, both the police and the MLCC blamed Tummillo for the violence that struck the Empire Cabaret.
Soronow said that Tummillo circulated a copy of a letter sent to the MLCC last week when he returned his liquor license. The letter, written by Soronow, states that Tummillo had been a leader in trying to prevent violence in the downtown club scene for several years and that he now finds himself being blamed for not doing enough to control the situation.
“It is tempting, but not realistic or fair, to make one operator or one establishment the ‘fall guy’ for a complex problem,” Soronow stated in his letter to the MLCC. “It is all the more unfair, when that operator is a person who has been consistently endeavouring to raise an increased awareness of the problems and who at the same time, has sought the involvement of other stakeholders in addressing the issue.” Soronow said he doesn’t believe that the MLCC would have taken Tummillo’s liquor license back even if the hearing, planned for today, had gone ahead.
aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca