By Ken Alltucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A popular Main Street bar with a history of fire and building code violations was briefly shut down Friday night but quickly reopened after Mayor Charlie Luken's aide called the city's chief building inspector.

The city's buildings and inspections department ordered Bar Cincinnati shut down Friday after citing it for illegal electrical splices, improper use of the basement and blocking handicapped bathroom stalls.

Friday's order was the third time the Buildings and Inspections Department had ruled the bar should be closed. Before then, the most recent order came in May 2002, when the bar initially failed to complete required improvements. .

On Friday, the bar was closed for just two hours, before inspectors returned for a follow-up review and were satisfied the latest violations had been cleared up.

The follow-ups came after phone calls from Assistant City Manager Rashad Young and Luken's aide, Brendon Cull, who earlier fielded a complaint from the bar's owners of poor treatment from building inspectors.

Both Young and Cull say the calls to Fire Chief Robert Wright, Buildings and Inspections Director Bill Langevin and Assistant Buildings Director Paul Myers weren't an attempt to undercut safety concerns.

"The bar owner said he wasn't treated well," said Cull. "I'm concerned about business owners; but if there is a safety concern, I'd rather have them closed."

After receiving the complaint, Cull called Myers and requested information about why the bar was shut down. He later ran into Young at Main Street's popular Bock Fest beer festival, and Young agreed to call Wright and the building department administrators.

Young said he wanted to "make sure the inspection was complete. If the building needed to be closed for any hazard, I told them to keep it shut. They all indicated to me that they understood that was the message."

Chief Wright and several firefighters and building inspectors returned to Bar Cincinnati on Friday evening and talked with the bar's owner, who agreed to address safety concerns so the establishment could reopen by 9 p.m.

The bar's general manager, Chris Kobus, declined to comment on the violations, except to say "closing down on the weekend is not good for us."

He added that he fully supported Luken's ideas to revitalize Main Street, unveiled this week. The ideas include closing the street to cars and allowing people to carry open containers. "I have a feeling things are going to get a lot better around here," Kobus said.

E-mail kalltucker@enquirer.com