Owner: "This Is Being Blown Out of Proportion"

F.W. Sullivans president Jake Crocker said today that is being blown out of proportion and the stories and comments in the press are hurting his business's identity.

He is meeting with the police department at 4 p.m. to talk about the incident and his personal concerns after City Council members mentioned fining the business for possibly violating the newly passed nuisance ordinance.

Crocker said he was there that night and the guy who was arrested, a Tennessee resident, was refused alcohol after a bartender detected that he was intoxicated. There was no trouble inside the restaurant, Crocker said, until the guy and a group of other people were outside the restaurant after closing past 2 a.m.

Crocker said F.W. Sullivans has a great working relationship with city police and that usually at least one officer is always stationed at the bank across the street watching activity inside and outside the restaurant, but this morning the officer just happened to be on another call.

Although police have responded to the restaurant 10 times since Dec. 4, 2011, Crocker said his staff called the police on several of those calls. The others had to do about noise.

"All of the sudden because people outside of our business, they aren’t even regular customers, cause an incident we are the bad guys?" Crocker said. "This whole thing has been blown out of proportion."

Crocker said his bartenders did the right thing and stopped serving the guy who was involved in the fight. He said it is inaccurate to say that two people were "thrown" through the front window. He said two people were pushed back and hit the window that is a "40-year-old plate-glass window."

"It is unfortunate, but it happened," he said. "We run a very tight ship with our security team. We have a great crowd that has a good time and it is a professional crowd that knows how to behave and we have the same track record at our establishments in Richmond."

Crocker said F.W. Sullivans is bringing tax revenue to the city from a building that has had three failed businesses. He employs at least 30 local residents and the company has participated in Toys for Tots and charity work for the local women's shelter.

"We have been enormously popular, but we worked hard; our staff has worked hard to have success," he said. "I don’t like to be chastised for being popular in a place that the people said you would never succeed in, that the place is cursed or it is too big and now this place is bad because too many people like us?"

Crocker said that when he read about the incident in the press, he was speechless and unsure how to respond to people because he was there when the incident happened and at the time he didn't think it was a major incident.

"We have always prided ourselves on doing the right thing, so to have negative statements in the press is a little confusing right now," he said. "We don't see how that single incident should reflect badly on us because we did the right thing. All of the sudden we are the bad guys? We are a business here. We are paying a ton of tax money by being here. We are not a dump at all. We love this area and we are happy with this area but it hurts me to read stuff like that."