Inside Anthem Orlando. (Photo by Bellanee Plaza)
ORLANDO | The City of Orlando issued a 30-day suspension on April 17 affecting hours of operation at Anthem Orlando.
The venue released a press release saying the matter stems from a specific issue involving a third-party vendor, which had already been identified and fully addressed on Anthem’s end.
Mike Vacirca, owner of Anthem, says the third-party vendor was a security company and worked at the front door. He says it is “alleged that they didn’t follow proper security protocol one evening for a number of individuals in a single evening.”
“For that, we actually terminated their contract immediately, and we moved on to a new company,” Vacirca explains. “The new company is recommended by our internal medical and safety team.”
The venue has an internal medical and safety team that’s available on weekends. There are safety protocols and medical procedures in place for any emergency. Vacirca says safety is a top priority at Anthem.
With the way the codes are written, Anthem has to suspend the sales of alcohol at midnight. But once the alcohol sales are suspended, the venue has a half hour to complete consumption, and then an additional half hour to close.
Anthem received citations from the city on the AMS permit. There was a hearing that Vacirca says he attended and submitted over 200 pages of email correspondence between the city and Anthem. The emails were about the venue building out its closing procedures, the procedures around the AMS license itself and submitting the correct work to be compliant at all times with all of the regulations and codes.
Before the hearings, the city denied the original mitigation plan. Anthem requested feedback from the city prior to the hearings to try and modify its mitigation plan and make it adaptable for covering the denial, but the city didn’t respond.
“We actually have added additional policies and procedures to our mitigation plan into our closing procedures to make sure that not only meet, but we exceed,” he says. “So we’re actually doing security monitoring on our front door, through our cameras. We have an incident reporting log… We’re waiting now on the city.”
The steps forward are to revise the mitigation plan. Vacirca wrote to the city saying he will prepare a revised and supplemented plan.
“I’d respectfully, for one thing, like concrete feedback on the specific deficiencies identified in the prior mitigation plan by code enforcement OPD and any other reviewing parties,” he wrote. “When we were notified on April 14th that the plan was denied at the staff level. We did not receive specific feedback on what was insufficient or what would bring it to an approvable standard.
“Without that, we risk resubmitting a plan that may not address the actual concerns,” he continued. “Specifically, it would be helpful to know, one, the specific sections, controls, or commitments that were viewed as insufficient, to any required additions, thresholds, or language that would bring the plan to an approvable state. Three, any particular concerns from OPD regarding weapons detection, ID scanning, closing procedures, or any other operational control that we have in place, and four, whether there are baseline expectations applied to AMS holders in the downtown entertainment area that our plan did not reflect.”
For now, Vacirca says the best thing for the community to do is to support Anthem’s temporary change. He says it will be challenging and a financial strain, but the team will try its best.
“We will do what we can to pivot and continue to provide wonderful entertainment to the city in our downtown area and to our tourists that come and visit,” he shares. ”We want to make sure that our business will survive this next 30 days. We’re going to do everything that we can. “
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