Party ends early for Zhou B

By Michael Comstock

The third annual Printer’s Ball at the Zhou B Art Center in Bridgeport ended early at about 10 p.m. when police and investigators for the City's Department of Business Affairs and Licensing responded to neighbors’ complaints.

“The Department of Business Affairs received an area complaint regarding an existent large gathering of people at this particular establishment, and according to the complaint, basically there was just a large number of people gathering outside of this establishment every Friday,” said the department’s spokesperson, Rosa Escareno.

“We responded to the community complaint as we often do,” she continued. “Our investigative unit looks into these matters, and when our department investigators arrived at the location, they observed about…500 people holding an event in the upper floors of this establishment.”

“There were several issues that were problematic,” Escareno explained. “For one, the upper floors of this establishment were not licensed to conduct any special event of any sort. Special events of this magnitude, especially when there are hundreds of people that are going to be gathering, require proper licensing and permitting. So this particular establishment was not properly licensed to hold this number of people.”

Several safety concerns also arose, Escareno said. “There were a lot of issues because the location was not properly licensed or permitted. This is an industrial establishment. It did not have the proper amenities to accommodate this type of event and this number of people. More specifically, there were no proper emergency exit signs [and] there were not any proper mechanisms in place to assure that just in case of a fire people could exit the establishment properly.

“For example, there was only one stairway that led to the second and third floor that was able to be the proper exit for the people attending," Escareno continued. "There also were no exit signs that would lead people to the proper exit ways. There were a lot of paintings that were oil-based, and they had several candles lit throughout the establishment as well as people smoking and drinking. All those could be potentially harmful or potentially start a fire in no time, which is one of the reasons why we shut the place down immediately, because of the hazard and the potential for a tragic outcome that could come out if a fire had ignited there.”

Official comment from Zhou representatives was unavailable, but office assistant Rachel Stewart explained, “I was there and all of a sudden the cops came and everybody had to leave. People just started leaving, and the cops cleared everyone out. I ended up leaving, too.”

“We work in conjunction with the police department,” Escareno said. “Often, if we believe there is an establishment operating illegally, which this particular establishment was, and there are hundreds of people, we work closely with the police department. The police department dispatches their own team to work with us, our own investigators. There were probably three or four of us from this department that were present. Given the number of people, the  police assisted in ensuring that the establishment is properly shut down.”

The Zhou B Art Center has not hosted any events since. “There used to be [events], but not since the Printer’s Ball,” said Stewart. “There are only a few, and they have to be private.”

The Printer’s Ball, according to Anne Halsey, spokesperson for the event's sponsor, the Poetry Foundation, was supposed to be “a gathering of independent and independent minded literary organizations in Chicago.” It was the first time the event was held at the Zhou B Art Center.

“No matter who they are, they have to comply with the law,” said Alderman James Balcer. “That’s exactly what we want, and the Zhou Brothers, who are very fine people, have to comply with the law.”